• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

NetFamilyNews.org

Kid tech intel for everybody

Show Search
Hide Search
  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research
  • About NetFamilyNews.org
    • Supporters
    • Anne Collier’s Bio
    • Copyright
    • Privacy

The need to teach kids privacy self-protection

April 29, 2011 By Anne Leave a Comment

If recent news – about the iPhone, the PlayStation Network, and the privacy breach du jour – says nothing else, it says no digital media user can rely on companies to protect our privacy. No huge surprise, but an important reminder. And in this user-driven media environment, this reality will not change, no matter how many calls there are for more regulation. So, to get them in the mindset as early as possible, we need to start teaching our kids about privacy yesterday – ideally, from the moment they pick up a connected device. We don’t need to teach our kids to be afraid or to expect the worst of media and tech companies; but we do need to teach them to be as alert and thinking as much as possible when they share their movements, photos, and innermost thoughts wherever they play and socialize, using whatever device. We can all start working this into life as just the digital version of self-respect and citizenship.

Gamers too, of course. The data breach involving more than 75 million users of Sony’s PlayStation Network that hit the news this week was among the “Top 5” biggest breaches ever, according to Canada’s CBC News. “More than 70% of PlayStation 3 videogame consoles are connected to the PlayStation Network, which allows users to play online games, surf the web, chat with friends and download games and other content from the PlayStation store.” The stolen data includes names, addresses, birth dates, passwords, screennames, purchase history, and possibly credit card account info, but Sony wasn’t sure about the credit card part and, according to the Irish Times, took almost a week to get a handle on the scope of the breach. And Sony’s gaming community wasn’t alone in being privacy-challenged this week. Microsoft this week “issued a security warning” for members of its gaming community, Xbox Live, who play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, saying they “may receive potential phishing attempts,” USATODAY reported, adding that Modern Warfare 2 is one of the most popular games among Xbox users. Here’s some security advice for gamers from my ConnectSafely co-director Larry Magid at the Huffington Post. This is the perfect teachable moment for parents and kids to talk about privacy and safety while gaming, so here are our “Tips for Smart Videogaming” to use as talking points.

Share Button

Filed Under: Literacy & Citizenship, Privacy Tagged With: Parenting, PlayStation Network, Privacy, Sony

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

NFN in your in-box:

Anne Collier


Bio and my...
2016 TEDx Talk on
the heart of digital citizenship

Subscribe to my
RSS feed
Follow me on Twitter or even better:
NEW: Follow me on MASTODON!
Friend me on Facebook
See me on YouTube

IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

Categories

Recent Posts

  • A solution for ‘awful but lawful’
  • New global service for getting nudes off the Internet
  • Then there’s the flip side of ChatGPT
  • For SID 2023: What youth want ‘online safety’ to teach
  • ChatGPT for media literacy training
  • Future safety: Content moderators and digital grassroots justice
  • Mental health 2023, Part 1: Youth on algorithms
  • Where did my Twitter go? And other end-of-2022 notes

Footer

Welcome to NetFamilyNews!

Founded as a nonprofit public service in 1999, NetFamilyNews quickly became the “community newspaper” of a vital interest community of subscribers in more than 50 countries. Site and newsletter became a blog in the early 2000s. Nowadays, you can subscribe in the box to the right to receive articles in your in-box as they're posted – or look for tweets, posts on our Facebook page, and key commentaries from Anne on her page at Medium.com. She welcomes your comments, follows and shares!

Categories

  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research

ABOUT

  • About NFN
  • Supporters
  • Anne Collier’s Bio
  • Copyright
  • Privacy

Search

Subscribe



THANKS TO NETFAMILYNEWS.ORG's SUPPORTER HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM.
Copyright © 2023 ANNE COLLIER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.