Internet Safety

Last week we had a youth fireside for parents and youth on Internet Safety. We had a woman Linda Criddle speak to us. She has a written a book called Look Both Ways. I know a few of you are already doing some of these things but for some of us who are new to the blogging world I thought I would post a few of her cautionary suggestions.

1. Avoid using specific names on your blogs especially your childrens. Don't make reference to your last name either. It takes only seconds for people to do a search and come up with a name, address and phone#.
2. Be careful of the pictures you post. Make sure they don't have a lot of personal information on them (ie. house number in background-if it's your home, school team names, street names, license plates, etc.)
3. Be careful of information we talk about on our blogs. (ie. kids schedules, school names, when we are out of town, when our fellow bloggers are out of town, etc.)
4. Avoid posting "online quizzes" on your blogs. Often they give out way too much personal information.
5. Consider only letting a "restricted" set of people to view your blogs.
6. Remember "a friend of a friend" is a STRANGER to us. Everyone knows a criminal. We just may not know they are a criminal.
7. Avoid using public information as password for accounts, etc. (ie. marriage date, high school graduation date, birthdates, maiden names, etc.) Especially for the password memory refresher questions.

These are just a few of the key ideas that I jotted down during the fireside. This woman is basically hired to "act like a predator" in finding information on people from their websites, blogs, etc. She has actually called some of the people who's blogs have been too "public" and relayed all the information that she had gathered about their lives and it freaked many of them out. She especially mentioned "My Space" and other websites like it.

She pointed out that she didn't want to scare people away from the internet but just wanted people to take these things into consideration. There are predators out there who are specifically looking for people to scam, take advantage of and even worse. It was sure an eye opener to me. I think it's especially important for us to think about when we get to the stage where our children may "chat" with their friends or even have "innocent" blogs themselves.

Her website is http://www.look-both-ways.com/