Keeping your children safe online

With the increasing use of technology in everyday life, it is essential that all children become confident and safe users of the internet and other technology. Children are taught E-Safety rules and expectations as soon as they start at Scientia, and these are reinforced regularly through PSHE and computing lessons, assemblies and themed days.

How to improve online Safety at home.

Often, young people are anxious about how their parents may react if they are made aware of their activity online. This prevents children/young people from speaking out when something is happening to them online.

It is important that, whilst children are made aware of boundaries to their behaviour and advised how to keep themselves safe, they are also made aware that it is never too late to tell somebody if something goes wrong.

CEOP has the following advice for parents in order to make the online experience for children as safe as possible:

• Encourage child/ren to think of an adult that they can trust to tell if somebody is frightening, upsetting or hurting them. This could be a parent, teacher, youth club worker or an agency like CEOP. 
• If possible, remove or disable any webcam facility on the computer being used by the child/ren. Only reinstall this at times when a trusted adult is able to supervise their use of it.
• Parents should have access to all of their child’s online accounts and control the passwords. This includes email, Facebook, Skype etc. In addition, we encourage parents to routinely review children’s internet accounts to ensure that they are not placing them at risk or are not being exploited by way of their activities online.
• When children are considering using a new game, website or application, we encourage parents to check the terms of service for that game, etc. to ensure they are fully informed of the nature of the provision (i.e. are there live chat facilities/webcam etc provided) and so they are sure their child meets the minimum age requirements.
• Remember that internet connection is included within smartphones, tablets, ipods, laptops and games consoles, not just computers, so the same precautions should be taken with them.
• We would also suggest parents link all of their child’s accounts, including emails, to their own. This means any emails their child gets, they will also get, which should warn them if their child registers for inappropriate websites or is in receipt of any suspicious contact.
• We advise children not to talk to anyone online that they do not personally know offline. This is sometimes made difficult due to the nature of games such as MMOs or other online communities, so we encourage children not to move people across platforms (i.e. from games to Facebook or from Facebook to Skype) unless they are known to them in real life.
• Parents should discuss the online identities that their child uses when online. Advise them of the risks in which they may place themselves if they portrays themselves as being older or if they create online personas that include suggestive nicknames, their own name and or age i.e. [email protected] or [email protected]. CEOP are often able to identify young people who come to notice, solely by the information they share within chats and their user names/online identities.
• SPAM – is really common among users. This type of message is computer generated and it is almost impossible to find its source. Unfortunately, there is little that we at CEOP can do to stop it. Some messages request that a credit card is used to prove identity, under no circumstances should you disclose this information. I recommend that first of all, your child changes the passwords on their accounts and keeps them private at all times. It’s best to tell their contacts to do the same, as they could all be sending it to each other without knowing. It’s best they do not add anyone that they do not know to their instant messenger contacts, as this will make them more vulnerable to this type of thing. It’s a good idea, that if they come across it again, they close the window straight away. 

We also recommend that parents and children have a look at www.thinkuknow.co.uk. This is a CEOP website that has separate sections for parents and young people and has some great tips on how to stay safe online.