While spooky Halloween monsters are fictitious, cybercriminals are very real. In this day and age it is just as important to alert your kids about online cybercriminals as it is to alert them of strangers, because malicious actors are increasingly using the internet to find new victims. In this article we present some steps you can take in order to increase the safety of your kids online.
5 Tips to Keep Your Kids Safe Online
Make a list of appropriate content
As a starting point, it’s useful for parents to decide what is appropriate content for their children online and what isn’t. Sitting down and writing what is appropriate content or not will help implement the following tips.
An allowlist is the opposite of a denylist: instead of defining the things your child is not allowed to access, you define a list of things that they are allowed to access. Everything else is restricted.
It is important to make an allowlist of applications and services that the child is allowed to use. Usually this list should only contain applications, services, and devices that offer strong parental controls, to ensure that your children can’t be contacted by arbitrary strangers or access content that is beyond their maturity level.
Children will occasionally need to access content outside the allowlist. Teach them to request the content they would like to access to you first and you can review it beforehand before adding it to the allowlist, while also opening a channel of communication with your child about the content they consume.
Use parental control on your kid’s devices to keep them safe online
Parental controls are settings for devices and multimedia software that allow parents to restrict and monitor their kid’s access to content to ensure their online safety. Several devices and multimedia apps such as Spotify and Netflix, as well as operating systems such as Android and iOS, offer parental controls that help parents define what their children can access on these platforms.
The use of parental controls serves three important goals to keep your children safe online:
- Cybercriminals who target a particular child will try to convince them to use apps or websites that hide their communications and make them difficult for parents to monitor, or even to know that these communications have taken place. In this case, parental control serves as active protection. If properly configured, it will prevent the child from installing apps or accessing services that cybercriminals could use to hide their parent interactions.
- It serves as passive protection, preventing the child from accessing websites and applications that would expose them to cybercriminals in the first place.
- Finally, in multimedia applications, parental controls protect a child from accessing multimedia content that exceeds their maturity level.
It is advantageous to take the time to read the manufacturer’s instructions to adjust parental checks correctly. More enterprising children may find a way around parental controls or receive instructions on how to do so by a cybercriminal.
Once parental controls are in place, parents ensure that their other content decisions are properly applied to the child’s devices.
Use messaging and social media apps designed for kids
Cybercriminals often start their attacks by catfishing children by pretending to be a peer of their school or neighborhood. According to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection,22% of luring incidents in the past two years have occurred via Facebook/Facebook Messenger, and 34% of incidents on Instagram, Snapchat or KIK Messenger.
Fortunately, there are alternatives for children. We recommend that parents only allow apps designed specifically for children, such as Messenger Kids. Messenger Kids provides much more in-depth monitoring of a child’s communications, and is a great alternative to Facebook Messenger to keep your kids safe online.
Limit web access with a custom DNS provider
You’re probably wondering what a DNS provider is. Think of a DNS provider as an Internet directory. When you type https://catsinboxes.example on your web browser, it asks your DNS provider what the IP address of that page is so they can request the page and access it.
Usually, your DNS provider is automatically set by your Internet service provider. However, it is possible to use another DNS provider, which allows better control to the authorized or unauthorized sites in your home. It also monitors the websites your child has access.
With a custom DNS provider, it is possible to check whether the website is authorized, as previously defined by the parent, before it returns the IP address of the requested website. These services contain pre-defined lists that are used to block a wide range of malicious websites, making it easier for your child to keep them safe from them or to content that is unsuitable for their maturity level. Fraudulent websites, malware, pornography, gambling and others are easily blocked with a click. This also allows parents to apply a secure search setting at any time and block tools that can bypass the defined restrictions.
Some of the best known options are OpenDNS and NextDNS. NextDNS is especially useful for this task, as it offers easy-to-use apps that you can install on your child’s device so that DNS protection is always enabled no matter where they go. If access to the NextDNS app is limited through parental control, it is a powerful solution to protect your child on the Internet.
Stay informed!
It is important to stay informed of emerging cyber threats against youth in Canada. Fortunately, there are easy-to-access resources to keep you up to date:
- protectkidsonline.ca is a useful resource to learn more about the risks of a child’s online activity and provides advice on how to handle these situations.
- cyberaide.ca provides reports and instructions on what to do in the wake of a security incident, as well as information on Internet security resources for children and adolescents.
Jasmin Landry
Cybersecurity advisor and intrusion test
Ricardo Lima
IT and Cybersecurity Analyst