| Join
Our List |
|
A recent email
scam:
|
I recently received an email
from the 17-year old son of a friend. The email
address was correct but the content, one strange link
with no additional text, made me suspicious.
I emailed him back and asked if he had sent me that
link. He confirmed that his account had been
hacked and used by scammers to send out links leading to
a malware site.
Click here
to see an image of the email I received.
Doug
How difficult is it for
hackers to guess a password using programs called
Password Crackers? It's easier than you think.
Check out How Hackers
Will Crack Your Password by Robert Graham at
DarkReading.com. How long would it take a cracker
to crack your password?
Our Internet safety
curriculum contains a password quiz that asks students
(and adults) to rate their passwords using numerical
scores based on good password practices versus poor
practices. Most of the sixth graders I met with
recently had scores in the negative values! (Top scores
are 8 - 12
points.)
|
About
Children
Online
|
Children Online offers
innovative and comprehensive workshops on Internet
safety and online education to students, parents,
faculty and administrators. Our approach,
unique in the field of Internet safety, combines a
thorough understanding of Internet technologies, child
development and counseling, to focus on the impact of
the internet on the social, emotional and language
development of young people.
Doug Fodeman and Marje
Monroe, experts in technology, counseling and education,
work together to provide invaluable research and tools
for parents and schools with practical real-life
solutions to the issues faced by young people
online. Since 1997, Marje and Doug have spoken to
thousands of students, teachers and parents.
They have several publications in the area of Internet
safety and offer a free online newsletter. More
detailed information can be found at
ChildrenOnline.org.
| | |
29th
Edition of the Children Online Newsletter.
As we begin
another academic year focusing on the safe and healthy
use of the Internet and telecommunications by teens and
children, we turn our attention to one of the most basic
forms of telecommunication... Email. Email, one of
the oldest forms of telecommunication, is often seen as
one of the safest ways for children and teens to
communicate online. However, this is far from
true, for both adults and children. Many of
today's biggest concerns about the use of email affect
children and adults alike. While adults are much
more capable of navigating telecommunications, children
and teens often misunderstand and misinterpret emails,
instant messages and texting. We are especially
concerned about younger children's use of email, as we
have seen children as young as eight using email
accounts opened for their exclusive use, as opposed to
shared accounts with a parent.
Web-based email
providers litter the Internet making it possible for
anyone to create an account in seconds. In fact,
we recommend that older teens and adults keep throwaway
email accounts to give to requesting websites and
commercial services instead of their personal accounts.
Sites such as Google's Gmail, Yahoo, Juno, Hotmail
(Windows Live Hotmail), and AIM Mail are some of the
most popular web-based email service
providers.
What are the risks today that come
from using email? And how can we better educate
our children and students to be "email-savvy"? How
can we better protect ourselves, and our
computers? That is the topic of this month's
newsletter.
As always, we invite your comments,
as well as ideas for future newsletters. Our telephone
number for Children Online is 413-214-1225.
Best
wishes,
Marje
Monroe and Doug Fodeman
Contact Marje or Doug via
email at marjem@childrenonline.org or
dougf@childrenonline.org for information about our
programs or consulting services.
|
Teaching Kids How to be Email
Savvy
|
|
Conversation starters for
children and parents:
How is email the same as
communicating in person? How is it
different?
And then followed by...
Do
you always know who is reading your message?
Do you
always know who you are "talking" to?
Is it easier or
harder to express emotion?
Is it easier or harder for
someone to misunderstand your message?
Is it easier
or harder for someone to misunderstand your
emotions?
Can your words exist long after you have
spoken them?
Can your words reach people without your
knowledge or permission?
Can someone pretend to be
you in an email?
Are you always certain that your
message gets to your intended audience?
Can emails
carry harmful or bad things?
Following a
classroom discussion recently with sixth graders, the
above questions seemed rhetorical. For the most
part, they understood that emails can be read by many
people, not just the intended recipient. They
understood that emails can be forwarded, printed,
copied, altered, and that once sent, the sender loses
all control over the content of the email. They
understood that it is generally harder to express
emotion or even intention in the content of an email
compared to RL (Real Life).
Some of them however
didn't know that emails can easily be spoofed so that
they appear to come from a "friend". One
example has occurred frequently this fall with emails
made to look as though they came from
123greetingcards.com, announcing that the recipient has
received an e-card from a family member:
These
links will show you two other spoofed emails from
previous years: Scam1, Scam2.
All three of these
e-greeting cards are tricks designed to manipulate the
recipient into clicking a link or attachment that will
cause a malware infection of their computer. (Notice
that our firewall stripped the malware attachment from
the email above, stating that it had been blocked.) The
malware could result in identity theft, theft of login
credentials and passwords to a parent's bank accounts or
credit cards, or nothing less than the complete control
of a computer by a hacker.
In the past,
what has concerned most parents and teachers about kids'
use of email has been the dissemination of rumors,
bullying, humiliation, violation of privacy, exposure to
ridicule, etc as kids say things in email that shouldn't
be said. These types of negative behaviors still
persist today but, we feel, occur much less frequently
than they do via instant messaging, texting and through
the use of social networking
sites.
However, the types of pranks or
other hurtful behavior that kids sometimes play on one
another using email pale in comparison to the dangers
that pour into all of our in-boxes today, including our
children. It is difficult for many adults to
recognize what is risky or not. Children however,
are easily fooled by very slick sophisticated tricks
used by unscrupulous marketers, scammers, con artists
and thieves online. And their mistakes can give
thieves access to our bank accounts and credit cards,
result in identity theft or turn our computers into a
spammer's spambot. Identity theft using children's
personal information is on the rise this year. We all
need to teach our children/students, and ourselves, how
to recognize the most common tricks and methods used by
scammers. We parents also need to re-evaluate
whether or not our younger children ought to have email
accounts for their exclusive use.
Here are some email rules to
live by:
- Don't open emails from anyone you don't
recognize. This may not always be a
problem. However, it is always good advice for
children and teens. Emails can be used to
attack computers with viruses or malware.
Malicious emails are usually sent from addresses that
you don't recognize. At the very least, we need to
teach kids to be careful and skeptical about what they
read in unsolicited emails from strangers. Kids
are easily fooled by emails beginning with
sonyplaystation, lego, walmartrewards, etc... Be
careful to avoid emails whose sender address does not
match the name that proceeds the address.
E.g.
(John Smith <respnd21@roxxoff.com>)
- Do NOT open or click on any links or attachments
that arrive unexpectedly. While some may be
appropriate links to photos or articles, children and
teens can be easily tricked into clicking a link that
actually contains a virus, Trojan or other
malware. The best advice for children/teens is
to avoid clicking links in emails.
- Emails can be made to look like they come from
anyone, anywhere, even the Pope and President
Obama. Tell children and teens to be very
careful when opening these type of emails, especially
those that seem to come from someone famous or
unexpected emails from well known and recognizable
organizations or companies such as CNN, ABC news, etc.
That also includes emails that have been spoofed to
look like they came from our own accounts! Spammers
often use this trick because people will often open
emails that seem to have been sent from their own
accounts because they are curious as to what they
contain.
- There is very little legislation or oversight
protecting our email from scams, identity theft or
viruses and other malware. Children and teens
need careful monitoring to help them use email safely.
- ChildrenOnline recommends that students younger
than 6th grade should not have their own personal
private email accounts.
- Teach children to be respectful, kind and
responsible in all email communication. Encourage them
not to put into an email (or IM, text or social
network) anything they wouldn't want to have published
for the world to see, including parents, teachers, and
other friends.
- Encourage children and teens to use strong
passwords of at least
8 characters and to never share their password
with anyone BUT PARENTS!
|
|
|
INTERNET
SAFETY CURRICULUM
|
|
Safe Practices for
Life Online
Children Online has a
curriculum on Internet Safety that includes nearly 100
student exercises and lots of information on many topics
including social networks, instant messaging,
cyberbullying, online marketing, scams directed at kids,
protecting privacy online, avoiding identity theft and
impersonation, creating strong passwords and
more.
 There is also a student
edition which includes cartoons and "Did you know"
sections of interesting facts for students.
|
|
© Children Online 2009
Doug
Fodeman & Marje Monroe.
For permission to reprint
please contact
DougF@ChildrenOnline.org
| |
| |
