Internet Safety Reflection Week 14 PLE

I read Provident Living Guidelines Regarding Internet Safety. This article talked about how to safeguard homes in order to reduce the risk of family members seeing pornographic materials on the Internet. Some advice it gave was to put computers in public areas of the home (i.e. kitchen, living room), and to install and know how to use filtering programs. It also said to talk about internet safety with your kids so if they come across something, they know to tell their parents, and warn them to not give out any personal info online.

In class we watched 60minutes of material on internet safety, and by these videos, my eyes were opened to the reality of the dangers that exist with internet communication. Although the internet if a blessing (I use it to talk with family members all the time), if you blindly mess around online, you can easily fall into traps. From these videos I learned that people set up websites with addresses similar to popular ones. This is so if someone makes a typo, they will be lead to a different, possibly dangerous site. It is important to note the difference between .com, .net, .gov, and .org. Also, pop-ups and spam are present everywhere, which is why filters are important. I also learned about the presence of cyber bullying, cyber predators, plagiarism, and chat rooms. Lastly, the program, I-SAFE America, was talked about. This program is of significant value for teachers just like a fire escape plan.

I talked with my mother about what I've learned about internet safety. She is not very tech savvy, and doesn't do a whole lot besides e-mail. Thus, she did not realize a lot of dangers I shared with her, and how easy they can pop-up. I have one more sister left at home, and I think my mom will pay more attention to what she does on the computer. It surprised me when I talked with my mom about how no one is immune to these dangers. No one is invincible. These dangers could happen to anyone. We should never think "nothing will happen if I put my phone number online." It's important to safeguard our house, and be very cautious when surfing the web.