With the summer holidays upon us, this is the perfect time to give your children a refresher about the main dangers lurking online.

The top 7 internet safety risks for children

Summer holidays mean many more hours in the day to spend online. That in itself is not necessarily a healthy thing. But there’s more. Consider the following threats:

Cyberbullying
Predators
Inappropriate content
Cash/marketplace scams
Pirated games
Connected toys
Phishing

How to keep your family safe this summer

With such a broad range of threats, there’s no one-size-fits-all advice to help with internet safety this summer. However, a good rule of thumb is try to talk out any issues before coming down hard with parental controls or banning screen time. That’s especially true of the more serious threats to your children’s safety like online predators.

Consider sharing the following advice with your children:

• Remember to be cautious when interacting online, as people aren’t always who they seem.
• Make your social media profiles private and don’t accept requests from people you don’t know.
• Never send intimate content to people online, especially not those you have never met.
• Never click on links or open attachments in unsolicited messages.
• If you want to reply to an unsolicited message, check separately with the supposed sender that the content is legitimate (but don’t reply directly or use any phone numbers provided in the email).
• Always use strong and unique passwords for any account and activate multi-factor authentication (MFA).
• Never download software from a third-party app store.
• Always talk to your parents if you’re not sure about anything or if someone is giving you a hard time online.

And parents should consider doing the following:

• Ensure your child’s device/machine is up-to-date and running anti-malware software from a reputable vendor.
• Don’t store family cards in your kids’ gaming accounts, so they can’t overspend.
• Research any connected toys thoroughly before buying and always switch them off when not in use.
• Set ground rules about screen time and inappropriate content.
• Consider parental controls if the above has failed, to block access to specific content and set time limits for usage.

When you are a child, the summer holidays can seem to stretch on forever and you may be missing your school friends, so it makes sense to break up the boredom by spending some time online. But as parents, we also need to remind our children to put down their devices now and again, look up and live in the real world at least for a few hours a day.

If you are at all concerned about your children and the internet, contact Tapcast, and we can help with Internet Security, and ideas to keep your children safe on the web!