Pre-adolescent security
The use of the internet to carry out criminal acts is limited to a few criminals, every adult who uses the internet knows this well, a fortiori he must be careful if there are minors in the house.
It is our fundamental duty not to leave children alone to surf the internet, because the danger is there. Criminals or cyberbully can cause serious harm.
Some advice is always valid for the care of children. Obviously, it is increasingly difficult to manage security with advancing adolescence. Establishing relationships of trust and complicity between parent and offspring is fundamental, for the youngest to tell you about their experiences, any new online friendships, your doubts. Maintaining discreet control over the child and the emails received is an arduous exercise, especially for teenagers who attend forums and instant messaging. It should be increased in the child, with discretion, the suspicion of malicious encounters and when to immediately shy away from new virtual experiences, or when to suddenly break any form of communication with the unknown, hidden from anonymity. The ogre can introduce himself where he finds less resistance. This must always apply, even when the child plays alone at home, or together with other peers, or at a friend's house.
Dialogue and experience between adult and child is fundamental on what the child finds of interest and it is necessary to encourage the child to express himself for what he considers prohibited. Therefore educate the child not to respond to virtual provocations, like bullies out of school, but to teach how to disconnect the internet connection in suspicious cases and then view together the contents of the mail or whatever, it is a must.
Check that the chats or other discussion sites are suitable for the child and there is a moderator, write down the sites that the child visits without being noticed and examine the history of the search engine in the browser (Explorer, Crome, Safari, Mozilla). Where possible install a program that keeps track of the sites visited (we will have the opportunity to deepen the theme in the future). Have the child use only the user dedicated to him. In other words, you as administrator will be the only one able to delete browsing data, or the only one who can run the antivirus, or download programs, or allowed and non-violent games (this too will be investigated).
The child's computer should be placed outside the child's room under parental control. How long does the child have to use the PC, regardless of the internet, must follow certain times and according to the needs of the adult (is. when he returns from work and after the child's homework), according to the age of the child and above all to increase socialization and avoid dependence. This obviously also applies to some adults, who spend most of their free time in front of the PC and socialize very little.
It is also necessary that the online mail is open only in the presence of the adult, many pedophiles set traps with photos or other material to convince the child that all the harm is normal and other children have already done it before him.
Work to ensure that children use the network like the real world, perceiving the dangers and using programs agreed with the parent to make surfing and content appropriate for their age safer.
The best defense is to educate the child not to give anyone news about their personal or family data. The same goes for teenagers. Gracefully oblige children not to disclose their identity and that of family members online (social network, , forum, chat, etc.), never disclose your personal address and contact details to anyone, but above all don't accept invitations from strangers, without the parent knowing about it.
Online shopping is a separate chapter. Avoid giving credit cards to minors and any spending on them must be monitored, limiting accessibility to some sites. Recall that on the address bar in the browser you can always check the reliability (https) of the site with the appearance of the padlock. Keep in mind that some applications on smartphones and PC are downloaded free of charge from the virtual stores of all the major IT companies (Microsoft, Apple, Google), but there may be applications that provide both free and paid forms. The minor may be tempted to download the paid one.
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