Less experienced and less thoughtful, tweens and teens can fall prey to malicious people online. How can they be made aware of computer fraud? Can we prevent them?
Nathan Ouellet, 14, entered his mother’s credit card details on his phone. First, it was to unlock part of his online game. His mother had agreed – but not for the rest…
“After Christmas, my account posted a flurry of transactions,” explains Karine Hébert. It totaled almost $250. »
After a little investigation, the mother of three boys discovered that a company in France, which neither she nor her son knew, was taking these sums without her consent. Mme Hébert multiplied the steps to obtain reimbursement. Finally, the bank investigated: the transactions were fraudulent.
Protecting your personal information and knowing how to recognize the risk of fraud are two key elements for safely browsing the Internet. And this applies to teenagers as well as adults.
The ideal is to secure your accounts with multi-factor authentication. This means that we do not only connect with a password, but also with a code, sent to our telephone for example.
Jean-Philippe Décarie-Mathieu, Director of Cybersecurity at Commissionaires du Québec
Never reuse the same password (sites, applications, social networks, etc.), and avoiding predictable passwords are two basic tips… that we tend to neglect.
For Marc Alexandre Ladouceur, media literacy specialist at MediaSmarts, large-scale sharing, which teenagers seem to particularly like, should be avoided. “The more you open your device to the world, the more opportunities there are for the world to enter it,” he illustrates.
Among the best practices, he recommends that the “airdrop” function be deactivated on our child’s phone, that his contact list be reviewed and protected, that his social media accounts be in private mode and that calls from unknown sources are ever accepted.
Implement anti-virus and anti-phishing software (anti-phishing), such as Lookout or Bitdefender, is ideal. Also, it is advisable to turn off the Bluetooth function and that of geolocation, when not in use.
Even if there is no computer fraud directed specifically against teenagers, the fact remains that certain behaviors and activities are risky. According to Mr. Décarie-Mathieu, it must be understood that each comment, photo or video sent on the web then escapes our control. In other words, caution is in order.
He adds that this is just the tip of the iceberg: inadvertent sharing of personal information is one thing, day-to-day online activity is another. It generates a lot of information… without the knowledge of the users.
“The information generated by the activity of the young person gives a ton of information about him, he indicates, for example, which brand he likes, with whom he speaks, for how long, which page he visits… This is not just what we put online that talks about us, it’s all we do there! »
According to him, realizing this is a first step. There is an awakening to vigilance and precaution in understanding how companies, from Nintendo to Microsoft via Sony, and the platforms favored by this generation (YouTube and TikTok in the lead), collect data on users.
Do not think that activating parental controls will fix everything.
Jean-Philippe Décarie-Mathieu, Director of Cybersecurity at Commissionaires du Québec
Open communication between parent and child about technologies and what is happening on the web is a winning avenue, says Marc Alexandre Ladouceur. “By taking an interest in what our child is doing online, we increase the chances that he will come and talk to us if something happens and, also, that the parent realizes if something is wrong. »