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Talking with your kids about online privacy isn’t necessarily high on the list of back-to-school tasks, but it’s an essential part of every child’s digital literacy. I’ve advocated raising kids with privacy awareness in the past, but recent research suggests there are new, more effective approaches. Parents and teachers take note! Over the past year, Consumer Reports has done an excellent job elevating privacy issues as part of their mission to protect and inform consumers.

Whose life are you sharing when you share online? The question is not as straightforward as it might seem. Is anything that happens in your life fair game for a Facebook status update or Instagram post? What if it involves other people? What if it involves your own kids? Should they have a say in what goes online? While public moments pass, what’s shared online persists long after the event is over. Who owns the “rights to share”? In this post, we’ll take a look at some of th

An increasing number of products aimed at entertaining and educating children are now network-enabled. Innovative toy designers are harnessing the power of WiFi and cloud-based computing in order to create interactive experiences for children of all ages. While marketers assure parents the information their kids share is secure, two recent news stories have brought to light serious privacy and security concerns when it comes to these “smart toys.” Kids are especially vulnerab

Learning to protect and nurture a child involves a myriad of factors including nutrition, ecology, education, media, and technology. Privacy is also a part of that picture. Lately there has been enhanced attention on kids’ privacy, especially as they grow up in the shade of big data and the cloud computing which makes amassing and analyzing that information possible. While there are ways parents can protect kids’ privacy online, parents also need to understand how to teach th

Privacy is personal, but sometimes the privacy we protect is not our own. For parents, keeping children safe and providing sound guidance to them now extends into the online world. How does sharing photos and anecdotes about our children online have an impact on a child’s future? How should parents best safeguard their child’s digital identity? When the time comes, how do parents make kids aware of what it means to be a part of a social sharing economy, and prepare them to m

In this two-part series, we’re profiling several popular anonymous messaging platforms and discussing what to consider when interacting with them. In part one we surveyed the field and provided a guide for comparing services. Here in part two we’re talking about an approach to make mindful messaging part of your privacy practice. Why are anonymous messaging apps so appealing? Some use these apps as a release valve, an online confessional, a way to express themselves in ways t