ArticlesAn archive of Privacy Parent’s original content designed to help increase your privacy literacy.
An archive of Privacy Parent’s original content designed to help increase your privacy literacy.
August 27th, 2019
Money can’t buy you love, but it can buy you friends. Likes, comments, followers and friends are all for sale on the Internet. Want 5,000 “real Instagram likes” on a recent post? That’ll be $28, please. Need to increase your reach on Twitter by adding 10,000 followers? Then the “Premium Package” is for you. It’s $80 and, the vendor vows, “100% safe.”
Why would anyone pay to increase their friends-and-followers tally? What would be…... Continue reading >
July 27th, 2019
Your kids know what TikTok is, and so do roughly 500 million monthly users. You should, too.
TikTok is a social media app used to make and easily share short videos. It’s like Vine, if you recall that early-days video app, but much more popular. It’s fun, engaging, and easy to use, and therein lies the problem: millions of quick, zany videos at your fingertips, waiting to eat up hours of your day and…... Continue reading >
July 24th, 2019
It may seem ridiculous to you, but Instagram Influencer is a real job. And it can be wildly lucrative: a million bucks per post.
Influencers play an increasingly important role in the business and commercial worlds, which means it’s increasingly important for parents to understand what they are.
These are the people who will be in front of your kids on social media in the future, selling…... Continue reading >
May 22nd, 2019
A generation ago, some of us used to worry about our private conversations being overheard. Others, often derided as paranoid, suspected the government of eavesdropping on everything we say.
The rapid technological advances of today make those concerns seem quaint. The wired world has brought the “eavesdroppers” into the home and made them part of the family. These digital assistants answer our questions, play music we like, place phone calls for us, tell us…... Continue reading >
May 16th, 2019
A prompt to restart your computer or phone for a software update usually leads to a groan and a vow to do it later. And then later comes and you…vow to do it later, again.
Here’s a tip: Do it now, not later.
The reason for updates (yes, they’re tedious) has a lot to do with the current state of digital defenses and making sure all users and their…... Continue reading >
April 9th, 2019
And that’s not a good thing.
If your children own or are allowed to use a smartphone, chances are good that they have installed the Snapchat app to communicate with their friends. Indeed, Snapchat is among the top five social media apps used by children, according to a report from ABC. Often, it’s merely a fun diversion. But sometimes, there are risks.
... Continue reading >
March 26th, 2019
When the Internet was newer, people used to joke about the most serious users being able to browse so long that some day they would actually reach the end. It wasn’t actually possible then, and it’s way less possible now. There are more pages, and the scrolling is endless. By design.
The term is Infinite Scroll, which describes a page-design technique and a Javascript tool that allows a site to keep feeding and…... Continue reading >
March 24th, 2019
Modern gaming revolves around online connectivity. Without it, playing games like Animal Jam and Fortnite is impossible. Although these games claim to be “free” to play online, there’s always a price to pay for this level of access. And in the case of online gaming, that price is a wealth of personal information that’s made available to gaming companies.
Downloading a mobile game typically prompts a series of requests for “permissions.” These have become…... Continue reading >
March 26th, 2019
Bullying is no longer a face-to-face occurrence. In 2017, more than 14.9 percent of high school students experienced some form of cyberbullying. And that number will only increase.
With smartphones and computers accessible at all times, it’s easy for children to fall victim to bullying both at school and at home.
And what’s worse is parents and teachers often don’t know it’s happening. Protecting your children is always a top…... Continue reading >
March 25th, 2019
More than 60% of people are susceptible to believing fake research or news that’s based on opinions and fabrication. The internet is full of that kind of “information.” We all need to be careful.
If your kids are doing research online, they’ve got at their fingertips a powerful tool that gives them access to valuable information and resources that were once hard to find or out of reach entirely. But with the good…... Continue reading >