How To Teach Your Kids About Security And Fraud

Children have a wealth of opportunities available to them on the internet. There are thousands of games and educational resources that they can utilize. However, there is also the possibility that children can compromise their security and become victims of fraud. Their poor decisions can easily affect their parents as well. Anybody with children who interact on the internet needs to teach those children how to make the experience as safe as possible.

The first step to teaching kids about security and fraud is to make the concept seem more real to them. Many children have a hard time visualizing money in general. That money can be even harder to understand when it is simply zeroes and ones in a computer system. Children need to be made aware of the importance of money. One way to do this is to set up a limited PayPal account for children. This PayPal account may be unable to make purchases or do anything but send and receive money from a parent’s account. The parent could allow a child to work and pay them half of their money in cash and half of that money as a PayPal transfer. Such an arrangement could make it clear to children where money online comes from and that both forms of money are worth the exact same amount in the real world.

Also, children should be taught to protect and prioritize their passwords. All passwords need to be backed up with two-factor authentication. This approach gives an extra layer of security by requiring an individual to both input their password and enter in a code that has been texted to them. They should always treat their passwords carefully and safely. Children and adults should never give over their passwords to websites that seem unscrupulous or questionable in any way. Parents should turn passwords into a type of key to a lock. Just as they would not hand over the key to their piggy banks to anyone, parents need to emphasize how they should not hand over their passwords to anyone who asks for them.

Parents need to teach their children best practices for dealing with money and their identities online. A simple mistake could lead to years of headaches. By making online money seem real and reminding children of the importance of passwords, parents can start to make headway against the digital criminals that will undoubtedly target their children in the future.