Cyber Safety
Online Safety for Children
- Be careful what you download.
- Never share your password with anyone, except for your parents. It may be hard to believe, but your best friend may not be your best friend forever.
- Never post your personal information online. Such as your age, cell-phone number, town, school, or home number. It is easy for predators to track down a location of a person if they want to. For example: In the small town of Aberdeen, a 16-year-old female posts that she is off to school today and has a track meet. A predator could narrow down what school she goes to, because there are very few schools in this town. They could also look at the track roster to find out where the track meet is.
- Never agree to meet with someone you’ve met online. If you decide to do something like this meet in a public place and set up a safety plan. This could include code words, having someone join you in this meeting, or informing others about the meeting in case something was to happen.
Privacy Settings on Social Media
Ensure that your privacy setting is turned on for all social media applications.
Snapchat
View Snapchat Privacy Settings
We recommend having your Snapchat “Who Can Contact Me” set to “My Friends”. This means that only people who you have accepted as a friend on Snapchat can send you Snapchats and view your story.
Under “Who Can See My Location”, it is recommended to set this to “My Friends” or “Only These Friends”. With these settings make sure that anyone you select to see your location is a trusted friend, who you have met in person and know well.
- “Ghost Mode” means that nobody can see your location at any time.
View Facebook Privacy Settings
- “Your Activity"
- How People Find & Contact You
- How You Get Message Requests
View Instagram Privacy Settings
We recommend setting your Instagram Profile to “Private”. This means that any one who would want to see your posts, followers, or other comments would have to request to follow you.
Under “Activity Status” on Instagram, we recommend turning it to "off". This means that accounts that you follow or that follow you can’t see when you were last active on the application.
- Protected Tweets means that only your allowed followers can see what you have tweets/retweeted/liked
- Unprotected Tweets means that anyone can see what you have tweets/retweeted/liked