Online Safety Created by Jina

Dangers Online The internet is a great place to communicate with your friends and family. As nice and safe this may seem, not knowing the dangers may let your personal information available to everyone. In 2007, over a 1000 teenagers were surveyed about their use of the internet. Out of all the teenagers, 69% of them said they received messages from people they don’t know, and 16% of those people considered meeting the strangers in real life. Think about those 16% of people who considered meeting them. They considered to meet them but have no idea who they are. The stranger could’ve said that they were a 13 year old girl when in reality, they are a 30 year old man. The problem with being online is that anybody could pretend to be anyone. You cant see them, they’re anonymous. People can lie to you, manipulate you, steal your identity and threaten you. You trusting them, can give them your address, number, school name, information about your family and yourself without you even noticing.

Top Five types of Dangers Online Now we all know that there are dangers online, but what kind of dangers are there? #1. Internet Stranger These are the people who will ‘stalk’ you online. They’re watching your every move online, waiting for the right time to take advantage of you. #2. Cyber bullying These people are bullies but online. They’ll try to use the internet to threaten you, humiliate you, and to hurt you. For example, using foul language anonymously toward another server is a type of Cyberbullying. #3. Information Theft These people may try to find out your passwords and pin numbers to try and hack your account and pretend to be you. #4. Disturbing Content or Images These people will try to get what they want from you, by sending you pictures and information you don’t want to see. For example sending you images of violence until you tell/ give them what they want is involved in this category. #5. Damaging Software These people will download programs and viruses to invade your software resulting your computer to be infected with viruses.

Cyber-Sense What is cyber-sense? Cyber-sense is basically common sense but online. Since having common sense will help you in your daily life, cyber-sense will help you on your online life. When online, and something fishy happens, the first thing that should go off is your cyber-sense radar For example, someone texts you, asking you to be their friend. You say yes since you think no harm would be done. After chatting with them for a few months or so, they’ve requested to meet you, alone. This is when your cyber-sense should be going off. You’ve never met them yet they want to see you, alone. First of all they want to meet you. Who knows who they can be? As far as you know, they could be a forty year old man pretending to be your friend, and he wants to meet you alone. Think about it. If a random stranger comes toward you and ask you to get in his car, would you get in the car? I know I wouldn’t. This is the same exact scenario except that stranger is pretending to be your friend. Scary, huh?

Protect yourself! Unlike real life where you can visually see and identify a strange/mischievous person, it’s a lot harder to do that online. Like I said earlier anybody can pretend to be anyone online. Your not talking to them physically, so how would you know if they’re lying or not. Remember when your teachers and parents always told you not to talk to strangers? Well every time you text a person you don’t know, your basically doing that. Sometimes this can happen without you even knowing. But how do you protect yourself? First, be private. For example, on Instagram, you have an option to make your profile private. This way people you don’t know/ accept, cannot see your profile. Second, remember you’re the boss. If a chat makes you uncomfortable or you feel like your getting pushed around, leave the conversation and block the person. Remember you can always screen shot/save the message, which can be used as evidence later on. If a person asks you for a picture or asks you to meet them, you have the power to deny them. Don’t think you have to do as they say. Lastly, use an appropriate username. A username including your full name, any personal information or inappropriate language is not considered an appropriate username. If you ever want to meet up with your online ‘friend’ be sure to tell your guardian and take them with you.

Protect your identity Like I said earlier, unfortunately there're are information thieves that try to ‘become’ you by stealing your passwords, pin numbers and in some cases your online account. In order to prevent this, you should do the things below. Use hard passwords other people can’t guess. For example using ‘hello’ or ‘password’ as your password is probably not the best idea considering that it’s the most common thing a person would think of. Using your address or the name of your first pet, would be a much better choice. Update your software. Like information thieves, there are people who will try and damage your software. To prevent this for happening, make sure you use recent programs on your computer and check your computer constantly for viruses.

Cyber bulling Cyber bulling is becoming more and more ‘popular’ each day and has a big impact on youths (ages 15-24). Not just cyber bulling, bulling in general has become a serious problem throughout the world. Annually, 6,078 youths commit suicide caused by bullying. There are five common types of cyber bullying. The first one is flaming. Flaming is when you post mean , hurtful and nasty things about anyone online. Second one is harassment. Harassment is when you send hurtful things, like swearing at them or making fun of their insecurities continuously through text. The third one is impersonation. Impersonation is when you pretend to be someone else in order to harass them anonymously. This will include a fake profile with false information. Fourth one is outing. Outing is when you post someone’s personal information like their address, phone number or postal code without them giving you permission. Last one is gossip. This is when you post or text someone false information about anyone. Although all of these types of cyber bulling can be done anonymously, don’t be fooled, for they can be tracked with the hands of a professional.

Dealing with bullies If you are being cyber bullied, the first thing you should do is to calm down. As useless calming down may seem, responding to them will only make it worse. They want you to reply, in fact they're objective is to make you respond to them. Second, don’t give the bully any power. Fortunately you can block anyone’s account, email or phone number. By blocking their number, you cannot receive anymore messages from them. Third, save the evidence. If the bully continues to bug you, save or print a copy of the message, for it can be used as evidence later on. Lastly, tell an adult. Adults have gone through cyber bulling too, and are much more experienced with the situation. Remember an adult is much powerful than you so they can help you more than a friend. Blackmailing, intimidation, threats and harassments are illegal and if it gets to the point where they wont leave you alone you or an adult can tell the police.

Becoming a super citizen Being a super citizen takes a few things to remember. If your going to be a citizen might as well be a super citizen. 1. Don’t fill other peoples inboxes with junk. Think twice before you send anything to anyone. Is it worth filling their inbox? 2. Be mindful of others privacy. When making a group chat for a project, use Bcc (blind carbon copy) so that your group members don’t get their email addresses exposed. 3. Be mindful. Remember that when your commenting on peoples posts, it’s usually not private, meaning other people can see it too. Think before you send comments. Ask your self, will this hurt someone's feelings? 4. Take control. Just because your friends do it, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s okay. You need to take charge of yourself and stop yourself from being a cyber bully. Bullying is NEVER okay, whether it was a joke or not, that ‘joke’ could have a huge impact on someone’s life.

Be responsible When using the internet, your first priority should be being responsible. Did you know that if you post something online, it can never be removed? Think about it. Would you want your future children, husband or wife and family seeing it? Posting an inappropriate picture can have an impact on a job you want too. They can search your name, and see all your past online things. Being socially active on the internet is totally fine, but is posting inappropriate pictures and bulling other people the best choice? Make sure you think about the consequences before you post anything.

sources For all the information, (excluding a proportion in ‘Cyber Bullying’) Mr.Beaton provided us with an ‘Online Safety’ booklet made by the Premier School Agendas Ltd. For the proportion in ‘Cyber Bullying’, I used a website called NoBullying.com