Tips For Dealing With Common Dangers On Mobile Devices

Dealing with Pirating

Explain how copyrights work and the ramifications to their favorite entertainers if their work is stolen. You can also explain that legal and financial penalties can be applied to both your teen and yourself.

Work with your teen to find a financially acceptable way of meeting their entertainment needs. For example, Amazon offers unlimited music streaming to Prime members, Pandora and Spotify offer subscription music services, and Netflix subscriptions allow for unlimited online streaming of TV and movies.

Explain that hacking isn’t a victimless crime that’s just about the thrill of overcoming a difficult challenge. Very few hacking attempts can be masked when going up against internet security firms. Your teen should be aware of the financial and legal ramifications of tampering with someone else’s accounts or with school, corporate, or government sites.

A McAfee study showed that 45% of all teens will change their behavior if they know you are watching, so talk to them about what your family values are around privacy. Explain the difference between sharing their personal information versus hitting the “Like” button on a friend’s post.

Make a list of personally identifiable information (PII) that your teen should never post on any site whatsoever. The PII list should include things like birthdays, social security numbers, phone numbers, addresses (home, school, or elsewhere), their current location, or their family’s full names.

Turn off location tracking on your child’s social media apps so that their whereabouts aren’t automatically shared.

Have a talk with your teen about the definition of cheating — sometimes kids just aren’t aware that their behavior is wrong. Be crystal clear about which acts constitute cheating — e.g., copying from others, giving answers to others, using the internet to look up test answers, taking photos of tests (even blank ones) to share with others, etc. Also, help your child understand what plagiarism is and why it’s wrong.
Check your teen’s phone if you suspect cheating:
- Oftentimes evidence shows up in the form of text messages to or from other students containing answers to test or homework questions.
- In addition to checking SMS text messages, also check messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook chats, Google Hangouts, Viber, Skype chats, or WeChat.
- Check the phone’s photo gallery for photos of tests or homework.
- If your kid’s phone has note-taking apps, be sure to check them too — e.g., the iPhone Notes app, Evernote, Google Docs, Google Keep, Papyrus, and OneNote.
- Ask your child to show you any locked apps on their phone. (Locking apps like Smart AppLock allow your child to create passwords for each app on the phone.)
- Lastly, check your teen’s phone, laptop, computer, or cloud drives for suspicious file names. The most popular cloud storage apps include: Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, Copy, iDrive, and Amazon Cloud Drive.

As a parent, arm yourself with information now. You should know the signs of cyberbullying and have a strategy for stopping it well before (or if) it’s ever a problem. Consult a trusted online source like the ConnectSafely Cyberbullying Resource Center.

Tell kids it’s not their fault and instruct them not to respond, but to save any evidence in the form of screenshots, text, email or voicemail messages.

If you find out your teen has accessed online pornography, make sure you understand what happened before reacting. In some cases, a teen might have accidentally wound up on a pornography site with a mistyped Google search or curiosity about a spam email resulted in a one-time click. Assess if the situation is a habit or an obsession by observing behavior changes. Then, have an open talk about the topic with your kid at a time and place where they feel safe discussing it.

Talk with your kids about the risks of sexting. Not only could their pictures end up in the hands of people they don’t know, but in some cases they could also face legal ramifications related to underage pornography.