51% of Latin American kids have access to internet and to Cyber attacks

In Latin America and Caribbean region 51% of children between 3 and 17 years old have internet access at home, according to an Unicef study. That means around 77 millions of children that could access to any kind of content since information for school classes, as malicious websites.

Although the new generations are “digital natives”, they are good using internet and accessing to new stuff in the world wide web but also are focus of the cyber attacks.

The adults are aware of the threats lurking on the internet because know not to become friends with strangers on social media or click ads for free giveaways. But the children may not realize the potential dangers when a stranger wants to friend them on Facebook or maybe they just really want that free device.

Regardless of the reason, children do not come preprogrammed with internet safety in mind. For this reason, parents need to be aware of the potential risk for their child, as well as the potential risk for their own information.

The best way that parents can protect their children, and themselves, is through education.

For this reason, ConsultaRSE share some recommendations to take in count:

• Information: as a parent you need to improve clear communication throughout the entire education process is key; talk to your children about online dangers.

• Use privacy settings: make sure to teach your children the importance of privacy settings on social networks and other media platforms. Show them how to enable the settings and sit down with them to do it.

• Updates and installations: teach your child to come and get you before installing or upgrading any program on a computer or mobile device.

• Use the computer together: have your child show you their favorite sites, games or social media platforms. Kindly point out possible phishing scams or other threats.

• Standard user account: iIt is a good idea to withhold admin rights from your children to limit what they are able to do and help lessen the damage if their account were ever compromised.

• Out in the open: keep the family computer in a high-traffic area of the house as the living room or the family room, so you can occasionally check in on what your child is doing.

• Teach them about TLS: Transport Layer Security (TLS) is the standard technology for securing an internet connection by encrypting data sent between a website and a browser (or between two servers). Show your kids that this certificates prevent hackers from seeing or stealing any information transferred, including personal or financial data.

• New devices: when you give your child a smartphone or tablet for the first time, use it as a teaching opportunity. Show your child how to set up strong passwords and set new rules for who can and can’t download apps. Show them how to apply multi-factor authentication which objective is to create a layered defense of two or more independent credentials: what you know (password), what you have (security token) and what you are (biometric verification).