September 2nd, 2021
You may not know about data brokers, but it’s their job to know about you. Creepy, right? Let’s even the playing field a bit.
You have to be constantly vigilant to protect yourself and your family when going online. A case in point is the issue of data brokers. Parents need to be aware of data brokers because they are companies that exist to gather a huge amount of information on people.
Continue reading >
May 14th, 2021
You’re going to be traveling again soon. Here’s a reminder: Watch your wifi. And while you’re at it, start using a VPN.
Summer is approaching and pandemic restrictions are lifting. You and your family will be on the move again, which means you’ll be connecting to the internet through unfamiliar networks. Be careful and watch your WiFi.
Using public and semi-public WiFi networks can leave you vulnerable to “man in… Continue reading >
July 16th, 2021
The FBI has a warning for parents: Online gaming isn’t all fun and games. Too often, the anonymous people on the other side of the screen are adults, preying on kids.
Parents need to know that while kids and teens are having fun playing with each other or against a machine, adults are also there. And some of them are lurking with bad intent.
The Internet Crime Complaint… Continue reading >
July 15th, 2021
Every generation benefits from the advances and suffers from
the mistakes made by its predecessors. Many of the problems we face today were
created decades, if not centuries, ago. Climate change, social disparity,
racism—messes we didn’t make but messes we live with and try to clean up
nonetheless.
Our generation is no different, though the mess we’re leaving for our kids is entirely without precedent. The Digital Age, which dawned with the Internet and blossomed with the advent… Continue reading >
December 28th, 2020
Here’s a hard truth for parents: Big Tech knows more about your kids than you do.
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter and so many more are vacuuming up countless bits of digital information about users. The details, when aggregated, paint a portrait of each person online that ordinary humans are unable to put together themselves.
These organizations may not know more about your kids’ personality than you do. But if your… Continue reading >
April 22nd, 2021
Facebook recently announced it’s developing a version of Instagram for kids under 13. It is a terrible idea. Let us count the ways.
Kids don’t benefit from staring at a phone and scrolling away the hours. Research shows increased screen time by young people leads to a wide range of behavioral problems.Time spent on a phone is time not spent playing, running around, building things—being a kid. Let’s let our kids be… Continue reading >
March 17th, 2021
If you’re reading this from anywhere but China, you probably don’t have a Sesame Score. But if you care at all about internet privacy and security, you should know what it is.
The Chinese government has created a social credit monitoring system to look over every member of its population. It’s called Zhima Credit and is popularly known as Sesame Credit or China’s Sesame Score. It was developed by Ant Financial, which is… Continue reading >
June 4th, 2020
If you think switching from one device to another makes you less track-able, then you haven’t heard about cross-device tracking.
You are already aware that when you’re online, companies are trying to learn all about you and what you’re doing. Most of the time, they’re looking for better ways sell you things that you might need as well as things you definitely don’t. That’s tracking. Cross-device tracking is, as they say, on another… Continue reading >
February 18th, 2021
You probably assume AirDrop is safe. It’s built right into your iPhone or iPad: a feature that lets people quickly share information with each other in the same room wirelessly. No need to transfer it through an Internet server first (as one does through DropBox or iCloud). So simple, so convenient. So private and secure, too? If you’re into updates, yes.
The good news is, it’s been made safer lately. But the technology… Continue reading >
December 22nd, 2021
The holiday shopping
season is upon us, and people are increasingly turning to the Internet to find
the gifts that they want for themselves, their family and their friends. With
every search for the perfect present and with every purchase, people are divulging
information about themselves, their family and friends to the Internet. This is
a problem for several reasons.
Devices are interconnected. Our phones, tablets, laptops—they’re all linked to the profiles the Internet (or the tech firms… Continue reading >