Protecting Your Kids From Cyber Sharks: Cyber Savvy Tip #1

Pictures, once shared on the Internet are out there to stay, with no guarantee you can delete them. It’s not just drunken photos on Facebook or MySpace that might come back to haunt your teen at job time, that you have to worry about.  

Innocent photos, in combination with other personal information posted and shared online, can provide more than enough details for a predator to stalk your child. Take a picture of a cheerleader, standing in front of their house, with the address showing.  

From just this one photo, any interested observer can find out just about everything they need to know. The neighborhood they live in, the economic class they belong to, the color and design of their cheerleader uniform and potentially the school they attend, how sophisticated or not they appear. You get the picture.

We need to teach our children to be very careful what information they share, and with whom. What they think is private often isn’t.

                                                                                                                                      – Bob Kessinger, CyberPatrol

Bob is the co-author of Surfing Among the Cyber Sharks: Parent’s Guide to Protecting Children and Teens from Online Risk