Ensuring Students’ Online Privacy

It is said that once your information is on the internet, you have lost control of the information. It can be used, misused and abused in ways you cannot think of.

As educators you need to guide students by teaching them the following precautions so they can maintain privacy while using the internet:

• Stop clicking on advertisements and other offers which are on the web.
• Disable popup windows.
• Delete cookies daily.
• Never ask browsers to remember passwords.
• Never share personal information on social media sites.
• Create strong memorable passwords for emails and change them once every 3 months. A strong password has at least eight characters and contains a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols.
• Have different passwords for different online accounts and never write down your passwords in a diary or book or even on a sticky note.
• Create two-factor authentication for your email accounts to protect them.
• Avoid sharing real pictures on the internet, better share a drawing.
• Avoid registering for sites that are not important.
• Use secure mail servers for sending and receiving emails.
• Encrypt important documents when sending by email.
• Tell parents to install parental control software on the computer.
• Tell parents to block websites at home which are not appropriate for children. 
• A useful source of information is kidzsearch.com