Year 7 were visited by Mr Matthew Southgate from 39D today to discuss the importance of Internet Safety. Mr Southgate is in the IT business and he helps a variety of customers with ensuring their data is safe, fire walls are working and his company deals with any problems that may arise.
Living in a digital world you can now complete your banking, shopping, online video conferencing, social networking, gaming, entertainment and communication through emails etc therefore there are many potential ways that you can be scammed if you are not vigilant.
Mr Southgate considered many ways that you can slowly become scammed and exampled “social engineering” – where you have been sent a text stating that your friend has lost their phone, used another phone to ask you to perform a random task for them. Over time these tasks may get bigger and bigger and then eventually you are sending them a £500.00 Amazon voucher which they can redeem and get the money put into their accounts.
Signing up for an app may lead to opening a virus into your account which is used to track the time of day when you generally go into your account. Harvesting this information from you will enable your account to be bombarded by a lot of spam at this time!
Is it possible to really make friends when you are playing a game? Can you be sure when you are asked for a friend request on face-book that it is a person who you know? Should you share pictures of your passport online? The Year 7’s considered these questions and contributed their person experiences and awareness. They were often puzzled as to why people would share such personal information about themselves.
Mr Southgate presented them with a situation – a lady shared a picture of herself in the office celebrating her “50”. Within an hour of posting, he had to request that she either cropped the picture or took it down – as there were 5 CV’s on her desk that showed personal information. This is a serious breach of data protection. It was amazing that such a simple act without malice could be used by scammers to obtain details that are very personal. Whatever is shared on-line will be there for an extremely long time so think very carefully what you post, what you share and what apps you choose to use. Always consider your choices carefully and continue to ask a trusted adult for guidance and assistance.
Check out 39D here: https://39d.co.uk/
