E-Safety

The point of E safety awareness is to help protect and educate individuals, especially children from online tormenting/bullying, inappropriate adult content, online scams and other fraudulent online activity. E-Safety, also known as Cyber Safety, Internet Safety, and Online Safety is the responsible and safe use of internet technology. It is how you behave online and also if websites or applications store and use your personal information.

Some websites like Kids Search only keep track of basic website statistics which shows us information on which country you visit our site from, how you found our site and at what time of the day you visited. Other major corporate companies can sometimes store a lot more information like what sites you visit, what you search for in search engines and more. With this personal information, they are able to target you with specific advertisements that are personalized to you. Malicious websites will do a lot more with your personal information which is illegal and we will go into more detail about this below.

We break down Cyber Safety into two groups which are Information Security and Personal Safety.

Information Security

Personal sensitive information such as passwords, credit card details and banking information presents security concerns if leaked. Illegal access to the use of private information can result in identity theft or theft of property. Below are some of the most common causes of information security breaches.

Phishing Scams

Phishing is where scammers will attempt to disguise themselves as a legitimate website in order to obtain personal information like passwords and credit card information. For example, an email or instant message may be sent to someone with a website link that directs the user to the scammer's website. The scammer's website will look identical to the legitimate website, like a major banking website. However, when the user submits their username and password, those personal details are then sent to the scammers where they can then use the details illegally.

Malware and Spyware

Malware and Spyware are similar to phishing scams but are designed to collect and send personal information like login passwords and credit card details without the user's knowledge. Malware and Spyware are typically sent via email as an attachment or are downloadable files from insecure websites.

Personal Safety

The internet is an important tool for communication with anyone who has an internet connection around the world. Unfortunately, this also allows malicious users to communicate with individuals for personal gain. This is a major concern for parents and children as kids are often targets because of their inexperience with the internet and communication online.

Online Bullying

Cyberbullying or online bullying is a form of intimidation or threat sent to someone through online chat, email, social media or other types of online communication. It is particularly common with school-aged children, especially teenagers. Not at all like physical bullying, cyber bullying does not include up close and personal contact and basically happens online using electronic devices as the primary tools for inappropriate communication.

Obscene offensive content

There are many adult websites on the internet that contain adult material that is not appropriate for children. Such websites can pop up from unsuspecting links anywhere on the internet, but they are mainly found in search engine results, social media, email, and, online chat rooms. We recommend always enabling Safe Search features within your search engine or using Safe Search sites such as www.Kids-Search.com .