Monday, October 24, 2011

What do your kiddos know about Cyber Security

Bean is accessing a website for her math homework and I was trying to figure out if I could viewPenguin  how many minutes she had done last week when she happily offered up her username to me so I could log in as her, I froze. Immediately I asked, have you ever told anyone else your username and password? She gave me that really weird look like I had plants growing out of my ears and said no, who would want that?

Seeing as we log the kids into and out of our home machine Bean had never had a username and password, nor had we ever talked about what that means. Yes, Club Penguin has a username and password, but we always log them in and out or we tell them the log in info as they are logging in. I have never thought to talk to them about keeping their information private. Yes, I am an idiot, I work in IT, I know better this should be something both kids know and live by, but they don't and I hadn't.

I stopped trying to figure out how to get minutes per week on her math website and asked her what her computer class and told her about user names. She said that a username and password is how she logs in to her website and gave me that you have plants in your ears look. I explained that her username and password were unique to her and that if someone got that information they could get into her math account as her. She said she didn't care if someone logged in as her. So I asked, well what would happen if someone logged in as you and failed the math sections on purpose so you would lose points and drop in the rankings. Her line, 'you don't lose points for that', ARRGG. I tried again, ok what if Chicken got into your Club Penguin account and set your triffle guy free (the little pet things).  This immediately angered her, she looked at Chicken and said I would make sure you failed and lost all your coins.  After I stopped the fight that was suddenly brewing, I reminded Bean that to prevent her brother from this all she had to do was not let him know her username and password. I light bulb went off, we were back on track, so you shouldn't tell people your username and password because then they can mess up your stuff on the web. YES....

This is only the beginning of the conversations we will need to have about computer safely and the internet.  Somehow during this process I realized like teaching our kids about sex, drugs, how to handle bullies and all those other things that we have to constantly discuss at the maturity level are kids are at, computer security and protecting your identity and yourself online is another thing to add to the list.

Can't wait till the sexting conversation...

Update: we ended up having another conversation this weekend about watching appropriate things on the Internet, and talking to mom and dad before you just go look something up. She was curious how nipples get pierced and Utubed it. Hubs Looked over her shoulder, saw the vid and just about died... Next subject appropriate things to look up and ensuring you always see a professional when you want tattoos or peircings.

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