Social Media Safety Tips for Students: Protecting Personal Information Online

Statistics show that kids and social media users are at risk when online. In 2021, social media became a hotbed for personal data security issues when dares like “post a picture of your vaccination cards” became trending.

As a teacher or parent, we must teach students to protect their personal information on social media. We should always remind them of the risks associated with sharing personal information online.

So, for example, what safety measures can they take when sharing personal information as a requirement for registration and access to online study materials like modules, digital books, and manuals?

Are there any recommendations on tips, devices, and software that they can use to reduce the risk of data breaches online?

In this article, we’ll offer practical and actionable tips for teachers and parents with busy schedules to protect students’ personal information online.

We’ll also discuss the potential dangers and risks of sharing personal information, especially when accessing online classes, digital modules, and study materials.

Finally, we’ll advise what tools you can use to improve your student’s online protection and keep their personal information safe from cyber threats.

You can check this article if you need technical details about devices you can use to protect your data from theft.

The Dangers of Unprotected Personal Data Online

Education nowadays has relied heavily on the internet, especially during the pandemic. To cope with the restrictions brought by lockdowns, schools developed online programs so that the education of millions of students nationwide wouldn’t be disrupted.

Many schools require their students, including young children, to get online and attend classes via video conferencing. Many of these apps require sign-ups, where kids give their personal information as a requirement for registration.

If left unsupervised, children may unwittingly share sensitive information online, making them vulnerable to dangers that lurk in cyberspace, such as:

● Oversharing personal and even intimate photos, making them targets of online predators

● Sharing personally identifiable information like school ID and documents with their addresses, phone numbers, and personal contact information

● Being exposed to online hackers, especially if the students don’t have proper security against malware and ransomware attacks

● Becoming vulnerable to cyberbullying and inappropriate content

Fighting Cyber Danger: How to Keep Students' Personal Information Safe and Secure

Securing your student’s personal information online is crucial whether you’re a teacher handling teen students or a parent with kids already active online.

Here are some ways to protect your student online:

● Help your kids create strong passwords for important accounts like email and educational portals. You can use password managers that create complex passwords that are hard to crack.

● Teach kids to discern potentially malicious links. Phishing and malware attacks can result from mistakenly clicking dubious links and attachments.

● Be wary of free Wi-Fi and the potential threats of security breaches due to using unsecured public internet.

● Teach kids not to entertain random chats and messages from strangers online.

● Always remind your children not to overshare photos and personal information like phone numbers, addresses, school IDs, and email addresses.

Aside from these steps, you can also secure the devices to protect your student’s personal information from being stolen.

● Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip: Hackers can steal your files from unprotected storage. TPM chips use cryptographic functions and encryption to secure data from unauthorized access.

● Universal Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI): This tiny operation system runs a computer’s firmware. Computers running on UEFI are better protected compared to previous firmware systems.

Students can use these gadgets to protect their information, especially when accessing educational materials and meeting links:

● Google Titan Security Key Kit Computer Lock: You can use this lock to prevent unauthorized access to your computer’s files.

● Mudi 4G LTE privacy router: You can use this to surf the internet anonymously. You can protect your identity and your kids or students from any breach as it hides your information from hackers.

● Cisco SecureX: Most systems today use cloud storage for saving files. This device can help you protect your online files from a data breach.

We must all share the responsibility of protecting students' online personal information on social media. So, let’s start by setting guidelines that everyone’s comfortable with, and adjust them as we go.

References

1. Federal Crime of Identity Theft – 18 U.S.C § 1028 https://www.thefederalcriminalattorneys.com/federal-identity-theft

2. Staying safe from online predatorshttps://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/internetsafetyforkids/staying-safe-from-online-predators/1/#

3. 17 essential tools to protect your online identity, privacy https://www.csoonline.com/article/3136241/17-essential-tools-to-protect-your-online-identity-and-privacy.html