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How to Keep Your Family Safe in the Online World?

The online world is a very interesting place to be. There is so much that can be done including office work, learning, social networking apps, games, live video streaming, etc. While it all seems like so much fun, you shouldn’t overlook the safety aspect as there are umpteen ways your unsuspecting family can get victimized. Cyber-crooks are tech savvy and know how to go around hacking into systems and exploiting innocent users. Sometimes it’s just related to monetary demands, at other times it could be blackmail.

Even if your family overlooks security features, you shouldn’t. Here are some ways to keep your family safe in the online world:

Secure your Wi-Fi network

With the router on, your kids can access the internet from anywhere in the house, making it harder to keep tabs on their activities. The best way out is to secure your Wi-Fi. Create a complicated password for your router and enable wireless encryption.

Parental Control

While it’s ok to open avenues of trust with your kids as you teach them about online dangers and predators, do set up parental controls and filters too. These tools reduce your family’s exposure to inappropriate content and websites as well as monitor their activities.

Privacy Settings

Teach your family about not sharing their full personal details on social networking websites. Tell them why they should never provide their full name, birth date, home address or school name. They should also not ‘check in’ to public spaces. Explain about stalkers, predators and cyberbullying.

Safe passwords

To avoid breaches of your online accounts by hackers, ensure you create strong passwords. An ideal password should have at least 8 characters and be a mix of alphabets, numbers and symbols. Where possible, include a security question too. And stick to the basic rule of never repeating passwords for different accounts.

Online shopping

If your family members are keen shoppers, teach them to always look for https:// in the URL of websites from which they are making online transactions. You should also tell them to beware of look-alike websites and to always check for spellings of their source.

These are just a few basic tips to help get you started.