Online Privacy

What is privacy?

Privacy is the right to be free from outside intrusions and to have control over your own personal information. In today’s electronic age, personal data is a valuable commodity — making protecting personal information a skill that young people need to learn.

The ability to interact with millions of people is one of the biggest attractions of the Internet, and most adults and children are unaware of how seemingly harmless online interactions put their privacy at risk and possibly threaten their safety.

What information should be kept private?

Everything personal about you! Such as:

• your name
• phone number
• age
• passwords
• home address
• where you go to school

Sure, you share this kind of information with your family, school and friends, but you don’t have to give that information to anyone who asks for it.

Ways privacy is invaded

A child’s privacy can be invaded when they:

• Fill out forms and enter contests on commercial Web sites
• Provide personal information when registering for Internet services or software (i.e. file-sharing, instant messaging, e-mail)
• Complete a personal profile for an e-mail, instant messaging or social networking account
• Give personal information to strangers in chat rooms, instant messaging or social networking sites
• Share photographs of themselves via email, social networks, etc.

What can parents do?

• Help your kids understand what information should be private and why. Information like their full name, Social Security number, street address, phone number, and family financial information is private and should stay that way.
• Explain that kids should post only information that everyone in the family agrees is appropriate.
• Remind your kids that once they post information online, they can't take it back. Even if they delete the information, older versions may exist on other people's computers and be circulated online.
• Use privacy settings to restrict who can access and post on your child's website. Some social networking sites have strong privacy settings. Show your child how to use these settings to limit who can view their online profile, and explain to them why this is important.
• Read the privacy policies, FAQs and parent sections of the websites your children visit to understand the sites’ features and privacy controls. Each site should spell out your rights as a parent to review and delete your child’s profile if your child is under 13.

What can kids do?

• Never give out your last name, home address or home number in chat rooms, on bulletin boards, or to online pen pals.
• Don’t tell other kids your screen name, user ID or password.
• Look at websites’ privacy policies to see how sites uses the information you give them, and talk about the privacy policies with your parents. You all need to know what information the site collects and what it does with the information.
• Surf the Internet with your parents or talk to them about the sites you’re visiting.
• Websites must get your parent’s permission before they collect certain kinds of information from you.
• If a website has information about you that you and your parents aren’t comfortable with, ask the website to remove the information.
• Sites are not supposed to collect more information than they need about you for the activity you want to participate in. You should be able to participate in many activities online without having to give any personal information.
• If a site makes you uncomfortable or asks for more information than you want to share, leave the site.