Children are ideal victims for online crime. Since most criminals do not want to be caught, they seek out those who are unlikely to do what it takes to defend themselves and will be slow to catch on when something isn't as it should be.
There are two major areas of opportunity for the criminal mind when it comes to kids: First, although many kids have an online presence, they are unlikely to carry any significant debt or own any high ticket items. They are pretty much a clean slate and in many cases may not find out that their identity had been stolen until they try to apply for a student loan, get an apartment, or apply for a car loan. Since this could mean a gap of over ten or twenty years (yes, even babies can get their identity stolen), there is an awful lot of damage that can be inflicted before anybody is the wiser.
Second, since kids are often immature enough to fully appreciate the full implications of not adequately guarding their privacy, they are more likely to divulge too many personal details to unseen strangers. This makes them easy targets. There is far less work to be done in order to defraud them.
Its Never Too Early To Talk To Your Kids
Considering that even preschoolers and junior kindergartners are now going online, it is never too early to start the safe surfing discussion. If kids can learn the basics of not speaking with strangers, they can be taught the extended principle of not speaking with strangers online.
Many of their favorite television shows and channels have correlating websites. Each site asks for your child's name, age, address, and a slew of personal like and dislike questions. They track their online habits, and if you are lucky, all they do with that information is determine the best advertising, marketing and program structure to present to them. Remember that you are never obligated to provide accurate or true information and are free to enter pseudonyms and false details.
Watch Those Social Networks
Too many parents are a little too giving with the sharing of photos and details about their newborns on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Information gets around far faster and wider than many people may be aware. A newborn baby is an ideal target. It isn't all that difficult to intercept an envelope containing their social security number or SIN card. Thanks to modern child labor laws, they aren't likely to be put to work all that soon and in the mean time some illegal immigrant can be happily avoiding paying income tax on their tab.
When it comes to key pieces of identification, parents should be very careful about how they store them and whom they divulge this information to. Often times, institutions ask for very personal data just to provide quotations on things like RESPs. Also, many companies use web based forms to collect personal information. You can never be too safe and should always insist on providing only the minimum and not over the Internet.
Also, many companies like to collect details about their target markets. They will send out surveys asking how many children you have, and what their ages and genders are. Remember that you are not obligated to anybody to share this information and that every small bit of detail that you let slip about your family is like a piece of a puzzle floating around in cyberspace. It is easier than you may think to collect all the fragmented information you may have let slip and piece together a pretty accurate picture of your entire family.
Guard Access To Photos
One of the biggest gaps when it comes to protecting personal information is online photo and video sharing. This is especially true on sites like Facebook and YouTube. While it is natural to want to let the world see home movies and cute photos of your precious darlings, keep in mind that you are letting the whole world see home movies and cute photos of your precious darlings. Once something has been posted, online caching makes it virtually impossible to fully control who sees it even after you may decide to delete it.
Forget About Your Child's Right To Privacy
Many parents are overly concerned with ensuring that their kids feel like they are trusted and need to have some degree of privacy. When it comes to the Internet, this is a very wrong premise. The fact of the matter is that allowing your child to feel that nobody is watching what they do over their shoulder only lets them feel like they can do anything they want. As a result, the only person that will be giving your child their privacy is you. The rest of the world can see exactly what they are doing. How much sense does that make?
As parents, at some point we all need to pull back and let our kids make their own mistakes. However, the scale and magnitude of the mistakes that they can make by not doing enough to protect themselves online is not worth the learning experience. Some mistakes are too costly to be permitted and the steps taken to protect them are the same steps that would be taken for a person of any age.
