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