Online Safety Tips For Students of ALL Ages
- When online, protect your offline identity. Don't give out your name, school, address, or cell phone information. As great as our technology and the access it provides to a wealth of information, there are predators who use the Internet to do things such as hack your computer, steal your identity and credit history, or upload viruses to your computer, just to name a few.
- Don't give out your user name and password for any website to anyone! Also, do not use the same password for multiple sites. Just as you wouldn't hand out keys to your car or house to total strangers or to a bunch of people at school, don't share your "key" to your accounts!
- Just because you deleted something from your social media account, doesn't mean it's actually gone. Whatever you post or a friend posts about you will remain online somewhere in some capacity. It also doesn't prevent someone from sharing, saving, or forwarding pictures and posts to other people. Future colleges or employers can and do check online to see what kind of person you are.
- If you wouldn't say or do something in front of your place of worship, in front of Grandma, or in front of a judge, just don't do it!
- Be careful when meeting someone from online in person. If you are purchasing something, going on a date, or hanging out with a new friend, make the meeting place somewhere public and tell a friend or family member when and where.
Bruce, D. F., PhD. (2007, April 7). Teen Internet Safety Tips. Retrieved January 9, 2017, from http://teens.webmd.com/features/teen-internet-safety-tips?page=1