What is cyber safety?

Cyber safety is the safe and responsible use of online information. How and where you keep your personal information and who has access to it is important as most of us and our children spend a lot of time online whether it is for work, school or social purposes.

What are the risks?

Being online allows us to learn and socialise, but it opens us up to risks. These can be financial (scams), physical (grooming) or emotional and social (cyberbullying).

We can mitigate these risks by learning how to be cyber safe.

One step to being safer online is by knowing how to identify scams. These have the potential to steal your identity with the intention to cause harm. We need to be able to easily spot a scam, so we don't respond to them.

Another step is to understand what not to share online. For example, when you or your child post your photo, phone number, home address, or car registration plates on social media, these details could end up being 'harvested' or misused by others.

How can you be cyber safe?

Being aware of what, where and how your personal information is available online is the first step to keeping it safe. Some key points to remember are-

1. Know how to create strong passwords, different passwords for different accounts and never to share them
2. Control cookies and add-ons to avoid being tracked online
3. Consider creating a family tech agreement (for families with children age 5-12)
4. Learn how to guard yourself against Phishing, Smishing and Vishing scams.
5. Update your software to the latest version
6. Protect your accounts with multi-factor authentication (MFA)
7. Back up your data to an external drive or the cloud
8. Log out of your device when not in use.

Social media day

Families can sometimes find it hard to guide their children in using social media technologies safely. We have collated a few resources below for Social media day which is on 30 June 2022 to help guide you in having these conversations with your children and possibly setting some boundaries.

• Create a family tech agreement with your child (under 5 – 8 years old) on how and when they can use technology

• Understand the basics of online safety, educate your child and set some rules with them

• Think about and get help to decide if your child is old enough to use a certain device and apps such as social media

• Build good digital habits in your child from a young age

• Learn how you can have hard-to-have conversations with your child (both 5-12 and 13-17 years old) about their privacy and security online

• Learn about online privacy, what the risks are and know what to share and who to share with online

• Parents of primary school-age children can take their children through learning about digital footprints so that before they start sharing images and pictures online, they know how long these tracks stay online and what this means

• Parents of high school-age children can take them through learning about digital tracks left online due to sharing content or engaging with others and how to be mature and respectful about this.

Digital citizenship

A good digital citizen knows how to be responsible, safe and effective on the internet and digital devices. The Digital Citizenship website has articles and resources for parent and carers to do with healthy technology use, avoiding scams, protecting your personal information and digital reputation, how to create strong passwords etc. To get help with online bullying you can head to cyberbullying and teenagers.

Online safety for families

Parents and carers can use our collection of resources below to improve their understanding of online safety at home and what are some of the important considerations.