Children safety in Facebook; steps to take care
Studies say that there has been a drastic increase in the number of children using the internet and social media, especially Facebook. Understanding its popularity and the increasing number of children targets, Facebook hackers have decided to make Facebook a powerful weapon to perform malicious activities. The main motive of these hackers is to leak personal information and execute ID thefts. When it comes to the safety of children, threat actors and molesters are trying more to utilize Facebook and carefully plan to target them, groom them and entrap them.
Facebook hackers continuously check on people's profiles until they find a perfect target in which they are interested. Then they use the social engineering trick to get closer to the target. Then slowly try to understand the target and get their personal data. As the process precedes, the hacker gains knowledge about the target’s Facebook activity, their social life, and their self-description so that they can use them to hack your Facebook account or abuse you. Facebook provides a lot of information about a person by which people can easily fabricate shared interests and understand emotional vulnerability which is the two important aspects of grooming/hacking.
Once the abuser gets hold of a victim, they try to blackmail the target not to report the abuse. Some of the blackmailing methods include creating abusive photos and videos of the target and threatening to distribute them all over the internet. Mainly the victims of these kinds of traps are children because they are easy to threaten.
Understanding the seriousness of the issue, here are four steps to protect your children from Facebook hackers and give them a predator-proof Facebook experience. As an initial step parents should teach their children how to securely use Facebook and control their social media responsibly so that they stay safe and keep in touch with their friends and family.
Stay away from online predators: Hackers and molesters are always lurking in Facebook and social media apps to trap children. To make their account safe, go to Account settings and click on privacy settings. In the basic directory information, check the “only friends” box and “see my friend list”. If your child wishes to connect with a known friend, he/she could send the Facebook profile link to the person through email. By doing so, Facebook hackers/molesters will not have access to your child’s account or their friend’s account if they are connected.
Decide carefully while choosing a friend: Facebook is full of people who wish to mingle with each other. Some wish to keep in touch with known people whereas some find it adventurous to meet new people and make them friends. If your kid falls in the second category, care must be taken. In such cases, it is suggested that both parents and children review the friend request and come to a decision whether to accept the friend request or not. And, children should be advised only to accept the friend request of known people. Teach them to stay away from unknown people.
Stay private: When children start using Facebook and other social media platforms, teach them to be selective about choosing friends. The friends of friends option in Facebook let children fall into the trap of predators who have targeted the loose network of their friends. To stay away from this trap, go to Account settings and in the privacy option select all as “Friends Only”. By doing so only your friends can see your profile and personal data.
Avoid getting tagged. On Facebook, people can tag other people to a post, so that it becomes visible on their wall too. This is an effective option when you are sharing photos with your friends and family. But this allows Facebook hackers to easily obtain your photos and videos. They can then use them for blackmailing purposes. To counteract this, go to account settings, select account privacy, and set the “Photos and videos I am tagged in” to “Only me”. This way your kids' tagged photos/videos can be protected from molesters.