Tag Archives: online safety

Devices, always connected to the internet, play a significant role in the childhood of our youngest generations.  There’s so much that is good in this, and so much also that is an outright threat to their mental and emotional well-being.  You might think that the worst of this is cyberbullying …

Parents of today’s adolescents grew up in a world where pornography was something you had to get your hands on, which was difficult to do while you were underage.  There wasn’t much of it around to start with, and then there was a host of regulations and restrictions that limited …

If you’re the parent of a teenager, you most likely don’t know as much about their online life as you should.  Our children are immersed in the digital world, inhabiting digital environments, and gathering in digital spaces that most parents don’t even know exist, never mind understand how to navigate.  …

The debates about whether children should own smartphones, and if so, at what age, have become a very modern parenting dilemma.  There are no ‘right or wrong’ answers to these ‘Big Questions’ about kids and smartphones.  The near-universal uptake of smartphones for children, at increasingly younger ages, is a clear …

Getting a first smartphone has become the major milestone of modern childhood, and many families are starting off the year with a new connected user in their midst.  Children are getting phones younger than ever, and parents need to be well-prepared.  Much like a teen getting their first car, the …

My kids got their own phones for the first time this year and it was something that I was very nervous about doing due to the dangers of kids being online. Fortunately at the time I was thinking about getting them phones I found out about FYI play it safe. …

When it comes to keeping your children safe online, solutions such as parental controls certainly can help.  However, there’s widespread agreement that parents need more than one strategy, and all online safety efforts will be more effective if they are underpinned by open communications between parent and child.  It’s not …

With the Winter school holidays here, kids and teens now have ample time on their hands to spend online. But regardless of whether they are on social media, gaming, or just browsing the Web, parents need to be aware of the digital dangers that lurk on the web and what …

Most of our children are online every day.  The number of mobile devices in the hands of South African children rises year on year at almost every age point between 8 and 18 years of age.  None of this is surprising; the digital component of all our lives is ever-increasing …

As parents we feel a certain pride when our teens stake out their rights to more and more autonomy.  After all, it’s a natural and necessary evolution from childhood to adulthood, a signifier that our ‘child is alright’ and that we are doing a ‘good enough’ job at parenting.  However, …

FYI play it safe adds security while protecting privacy Over the past festive season and with the start of the new year, many parents have put new devices into the hands of their children.  For many, this is an action primarily aimed at increasing their child’s safety because it enables …

The global pandemic has emphasized how important our digital world is to modern life as we pivoted out of necessity to remote working, at-home schooling and online shopping.  Many millions of us got our first experiences of certain digital platforms and applications that have now become part of day-to-day life.  …

In a drive to educate the next generation of Internet users in a fun and engaging manner, global cybersecurity company Kaspersky is set to launch a landing page full of resources in support of the book ‘Midori Kuma and a Very Special Race’. The recently published book, which is aimed at six …

Over the last 17-months, people have had to embrace a more full-on digital lifestyle, and everything that it entails. From shopping to entertainment, working and attending virtual classes, looking for love and even building online communities with friends and family, the way we live and engage with one another is …

Have you ever seen the movie ‘Kids’? It was directed by Larry Clark and released back in 1995. If you haven’t and you’re not into scenes of substance abuse and violence – I would not recommend you watch it. Almost three decades after its release, the famous quasi-documentary looks even …

From robot companions to AI choosing the perfect partner, technology has become permanently entwined with dating and finding love, especially after a year and a half of lockdown that made digital connections the only type possible. To understand the security implications of this trend, Kaspersky researchers conducted an in-depth study …

A global survey conducted by Kaspersky, exploring users’ attitudes to updating devices, has found that the activity has become a family affair. According to the research, more than half of respondents locally who have family (65%), agree that children and elderly relatives need help with updating devices. Additionally, updates can affect relationships at home, …

A free training course, based on the Skill Cup mobile app and developed with the Kaspersky Security Awareness platform team, has been launched today to help parents and their kids better navigate cybersecurity and digital ethics. Designed to cover key issues and challenges that children may face while using their …

With Kaspersky research showing that stalkerware affected one out of every 100 mobile users in Kenya and Nigeria in 2020 and malware every four out of 100 in South Africa, consumers must remain vigilant when it comes to their online activities if they are to keep themselves safe from the …