Hi, welcome to Internet Safety for Kids and thank you for joining our program!
As always with our program Internet Safety for Kids, please make sure to watch this episode together when possible, so you all learn and understand these important topics. Don’t allow the adults to say that they already know everything because there will be plenty to learn for them, too!
Sometimes someone tells you something and it is so fantastic, it almost sounds like it is too good to be true. You get very excited and forget to think it through. Afterwards you find out that it really was too good to be true and now you have to deal with whatever problem it causes. Sounds familiar? This can happen to all of us and when we are honest, we have to admit that it happened to all of us. Because things like this happen a lot on the internet, and we want to help you prevent it from happening to you, we will have a look at this in today’s video.
We will explain why is it important, what does it mean, and what should you do. Are you with us?
Let us say for example that you like to play Minecraft. Someone tells you that you should install a program that will give you superpowers and all the features you are looking for, or you find something on the internet that tells you to do this. You might be looking forward to the wonderful things they promise you, but you are not paying attention to the fact that they want you to install a program that you do not know. Do you start to get the feeling of where this might go wrong?
They promised you something fantastic and all you had to do is install this one little program, or click on this link, and all the magic will happen. Cybercriminals are really good at this. They give you so much to look forward to, that you do not realize that they trick you into doing something that you should not do. This program or the link could be the beginning of infecting your system with ransomware, or it could steal the passwords for all your accounts or install a virus that will infect as much other devices as possible. What appears to be something fantastic can quickly turn into something very bad.
There are many reasons why you should not fall for these things and they all sound very logic. The challenge is that cybercriminals know exactly how to pretend to be something good and convince you that you will get what they promise you. See, they don’t put a big warning sign up that says, “be very careful, we are criminals”. No, they will give you the feeling that everything is fine. Some even trick you by adding all kinds of fake recommendations from people who say that this is great.
The best thing you can do to prevent becoming a victim of these criminals is to check and check again, think and think again, before you do anything. In our example of Minecraft, you could for example check for the name for whatever it is that they want you to do in your favorite search engine. And as always, asking an adult before you do something never hurts, right? The most important thing to understand is that cybercriminals try to manipulate you into doing what they want you to do.
When you step back for a moment and do your homework by checking and thinking it through, you take away their most important trick. Think before you act! Let us make some notes for you to remember.
- Always think and check before you do something and never act just because someone says it is great.
- Ask yourself why. For example, why would something you have to pay for suddenly be free?
- Never turn off your antivirus software and firewall.
- Check for other sources, so you do not act on just one.
- Asking an adult you trust never hurts and it might help you to prevent making a mistake.