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Internet Safety Ask Questions The best form of Online Safety begins at home with you, the parent. We offer you the following tips to keep your child safe on the Internet. The best way to know what your child is doing online is to ask. Whether you ask other parents, an Internet-savvy friend, or your child about how they use the Internet asking the right questions will help you understand what your child is doing online so you can make sure they are making safe online choices. Questions to ask your child: What sites do you visit? What do you do on those sites? Why do you go to that site? How much time do you spend on the site? Did you have to register? What information did they ask for? What information did you give? Spend time surfing the Web with your child. This is a great way to learn about what types of interactions your child is having online, and with whom.

How could we live without the Internet?

Smart Surfing First rule of smart surfing? Remain as anonymous as possible. That means keeping all private information private. Here are some examples of private information that you should never give out on the Internet: full name home address phone number Social Security number passwords names of family members credit card numbers Most credible people and companies will never ask for this type of information online. So if someone does, it's a red flag that they may be up to no good.

Passwords are the first line of defense against cyber criminals. It’s important to pick strong passwords that are different for each of your important accounts and to change them regularly. Here are some ideas to help create strong passwords. Use a unique password for all your important accounts. Use unique passwords for your accounts, especially important accounts like email and online banking. You are likely to have dozens of accounts across the web, and you cannot guarantee the security of all of them. Criminals target sites that lack strong security, in order to harvest usernames and passwords that they test against other popular sites. When you use the same password across the web, a cyber criminal can learn the password from a less secure site and then use that password to compromise your important accounts. Use a long password The longer your password is, the harder it is to guess. There are almost one quintillion possible 10-character passwords (that’s 4,000 times as many possibilities as if your password only has eight characters) … and that’s if you only use numbers and letters. Use a password with a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols Using numbers, symbols and mixed-case letters in your password increases the difficulty of guessing or cracking your password. For example, there are more than 6 quadrillion possible variations for an eight-character password with numbers, symbols, and mixed-case letters – 30,000 times more variations than an eight-character password with only lowercase letters. Try using a line from a song, film or play Some passwords are easy to guess or crack: Simple words or phrases like “password” or “letmein,” keyboard patterns such as “qwerty” or “qazwsx,” patterns such as “abcd1234” or personal information like your birthday or street name.So choose a combination of letters, numbers, or symbols to create a unique password that’s unrelated to your personal information.One idea you can try is to choose a line from your favorite song, film or play, like “To be or not to be: That is the question.” Then use numbers, symbols and mixed-case letters to recreate it: “2bon2bT1tq” is a password with quadrillions of variations. The more unusual the phrase you choose the better!Or you could pick a random word or phrase, and insert letters and numbers into the beginning, middle, and end, such as “sPo0kyh@ll0w3En.” Make sure your password recovery options are up-to-date and secure Make sure your recovery email address is up to date so that you can receive emails in case you need to reset your password. Sometimes you can also add a phone number to receive password reset codes via text message. Additionally, many websites (including Google Accounts) will ask you to choose a question to verify your identity if you ever forget your password. If you’re able to create your own question, try to come up with a question that has an answer only you would know. Try to find a way to make your answer unique – you can do this by using some of the tips above – so that even if someone guesses the answer, they won’t know how to enter it properly. Keep your password reminders in a secret place that isn’t easily visible Don’t leave notes with your passwords in plain site, on your computer or desk. If you do decide to save your passwords in a file on your computer, create a unique name for the file so people don’t know what’s inside. Avoid giving the file an obvious name, such as “my passwords.” If you have a difficult time remembering multiple passwords, a trusted password manager may be a good solution. Spend a few minutes checking out the reviews and reputations of these services.

You can’t. You should. You must. Never… Always…