Staying safe online has become a massive part of education over the past few years with our reliance on technology increasing daily.
With not only educating children and staff but also parents and the wider community now becoming my focus. Here are my Top 4 Tips for staying safe online.
Now don’t get me wrong there are a lot more than 4 things to think about and more of these can be found on my Online Safety page under the ‘Resources’ tab.
With easy access to social media sites and with wanting to show off your latest achievement, posting on social media has become an everyday task for half of the world’s population. I discussed this point in a recent blog post about being Social Media S.A.F.E and how you need to maybe think twice before posting online. Sometimes oversharing your personal life can cause more damage than good. Always think before posting, would I want my parents/children to see this? If you have work colleagues, does it set a good impression? Don’t get me wrong everyone has the freedom to post on social media, but always take a second to think about what the future affects could be.
Now when I say this phrase to adults/staff their first thought will always be, this is aimed at children. Now, whilst that is true and we should always reinforce not meeting or talking to strangers from online games or websites. The same outlook can be given to adults, just because you are an adult and know the rulings doesn’t mean you can’t be caught out. Unfortunately, the world of internet communication can be just as dangerous for adults as it can be for children. Always take time to ensure that the person you are talking to is who they say they are. Don’t use unknown or unfamiliar websites, nor should you give out personal contact information to anyone who you have the slightly gut feeling isn’t genuine.
One of my favourite working in education IT, choosing a a strong password. Guidance and advice changes slightly on a regular basis but the core fundamentals remain the same. A strong and secure password should be one that doesn’t relate to you directly and that can’t be easily guessed. The core guidance out there states your password should be a minimum of 8 characters containing a upper&lower case letters, at least one number and a special character. This is firm guidance which most companies will enforce however to one way to keep your password even more secure is to use a set of three words or a small sentence. Now this may seem slightly silly however there is method behind the madness. Using a sentence of like 3 words for example TheGr33ntree! Hits all of the criteria above and due to it being a random sentence means that it would take someone trying to access your account a larger amount of time to access.
The final part of the big 4 top tips is relating to the personal information you share online. For social media sites like Facebook, there is a lot of personal information easily accessible to everyone should it not be restricted correctly. Sharing information online should only be limited to what is actually asked for and any other information passed over should be done of the side of caution. You wouldn’t hand purely personal information out to strangers individually, so ensure you don’t hand it out to millions of people online. Whether that be on social media or website which can be easily accessed.
Do you need more support or want further guidance? Head to the Online Safety page under the resources tab to learn more or watch out for upcoming online safety training under the training & events pages.
Want to share your top tips for online safety. Message me or social media @mrjsmithsonedu or comment down below.