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Spending a lot of time online, modern children face various dangers on the internet. Due to their inexperience and trustfulness, children can become victims of scammers. It is the responsibility of parents to protect them from this.
Scammers know perfectly well how to influence a child and make them perform the actions necessary for the scammers. Children do not understand that they are becoming puppets in the hands of scammers. Children, especially teenagers, spending a lot of time playing games and communicating on social networks, often fall victim to financial scammers who specifically prey on such an audience.
Protecting Children Online
The first ones who should worry about protecting children online are their parents, who need to:
- monitor their children's content;
- be interested in what games they play;
- know whom they communicate with online;
- know what they spend money on;
- understand how they use technology;
- see what content they view;
- know what communication topics they are interested in.
The main factor affecting a child's safety online is awareness and knowledge of existing fraudulent schemes. Parents need to communicate with their children and provide information on how they can recognize scammers and what to do when a stranger offers friendship online.
The main goal of online scammers is to steal information about:
- personal data;
- payment systems;
- passwords from accounts, social networks, and games;
- photos of parents' documents.
Once they have obtained this information, scammers can easily steal money from parental accounts, take out loans in their names, and, having gained access to social media correspondence, engage in blackmailing adults.
Financial Scammers
Modern youth is enthusiastically playing computer games and communicating on social networks and messengers, and it is in these places that scammers hunt for future victims. Trying to make friends with children in gaming chat rooms, pretending to be famous bloggers, they come up with schemes involving the completion of certain tasks that will help them receive skins, in-game currency, gifts or rare artifacts in the game. If they ask for photos of documents or payment cards, it should be understood that these are definitely scammers.
In social networks, they operate on the same principle, pressuring the child to extract the necessary financial information. To lure the victim to the desired resource, contact is first established. They may start casually advertising a "good app" that allows you to quickly make money, but for this, you need to have financial information or provide access to applications. After that, they may steal:
- personal data,
- the victim's gaming achievements,
- earned or purchased artifacts.
Online Safety
To protect your computer or any other gadget, you need to set up network protection from internet viruses and other intrusions; for this, you can use:
- programs that control detection and prevention of external intrusion;
- VPN devices;
- programs that monitor data leakage and prevent it.
All these systems are harmoniously connected and allow maintaining security during online work.
To ensure safe online work, it is necessary to keep personal data, such as:
- login and password in a safe place;
- change passwords periodically;
- be attentive on social networks;
- not disclose personal information on the internet;
- install antivirus programs and applications;
- monitor content with age restrictions;
- not disclose geolocation data;
- not click on suspicious links;
- not install applications from unknown sources.
By following these simple rules, you can ensure online safety for both adults and children.
Children and Scams
Scammers often take advantage of children's trustfulness and inexperience on the internet. They easily deceive children, luring them with prizes and gifts in online games, pretending to be famous bloggers or players. To do this, they may ask the child to enter bank card details, after which the funds from the card are withdrawn.
Fraudulent schemes play a significant role, offering children the opportunity to earn easy money:
- by watching short videos,
- liking posts,
- sending pictures,
- participating in polls.
For this, they also extract bank card data, allegedly for registration purposes, asking for the card number and the code sent in a message, explaining that payments for services will be sent to these details. If the child believes the scammer, the money from the card disappears.
Scammers do not overlook online games popular among children, where they try to steal both in-game currency and real money, extracting information about bank details entered in the game.
It is impossible to forbid a child from using the internet, so it is proposed to follow simple rules:
- do not click on links sent by unknown users;
- do not enter bank details without parental consent;
- do not believe in advertisements for prize giveaways;
- do not participate in dubious challenges;
- beware of easy money-making schemes.