Ep. 30 | Cybersecurity for Kids & Teens

Whether it's through online gaming, social media, or various smart devices, kids could be unknowingly exposing their personal information to cybercriminals. In this episode, BlackCloak's Amee Baldacini discusses cybersecurity best practices for young children and teenagers alike to keep them secure.

If you're interested in learning more, you can request a demo with BlackCloak here, or visit the BlackCloak website. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Welcome to Uncloaked, a podcast series brought to you by Black Cloak, the pioneer in digital executive protection and leader in personal concierge cybersecurity. I'm your host, Dan Basco, and today we're talking about cybersecurity for the youth. Joining me today for this discussion is Amy Baldicini, Cybersecurity and Identity Protection Engineer at Black Cloak. Amy, pleasure having you back on the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Hey Dan, thanks so much. Glad to be back.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

You have taught cybersecurity as a professional. And so I think you're uh very uniquely qualified here to talk about this. And I know that you've even helped clients with some of their best practices for keeping their kids safe when using social media and just cybersecurity best practices in general. When teaching kids of all ages and it comes to broaching this topic with kids, where do you start when driving home the importance of securing privacy? Because obviously there's so much to it. And even when we're talking to um adults, it's it's a lot to take in. So how do you kind of approach this topic with kids?

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Absolutely. So just like with adults, adults can easily be overwhelmed and you know, frankly, scared of this whenever you do have those conversations with them about what actually can happen online. So it's taking the information that we would give an adult and making it more applicable for children, right? So what I would normally start with is describing like the front door analogy. So you've got your front door that's locked, you have a key. You don't give that key to strangers on the street. What you would do is protect that key, or like you have a permanent marker. Um, anything that is on the internet is written in permanent marker. Once it's shared, you've lost control of it completely. So areas uh, you know, making it very applicable to their lives for today. But also with, you know, and and I've talked to children as young as five about cybersecurity. And so things like Stranger Danger that we used to do when we were kids, it's the same thing. But the idea of private versus public information, preteens, so uh focusing on their digital footprint and how free games are actually paid by taking your data. And as well for teens like 13 plus, you know, you've got social engineering, um, the permanence of data that colleges and jobs can see, as well as the technical side, like um metadata and encryption.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Yeah, and you know, I imagine the hard part too is, and this is probably why the analogies are so important, because the hard part's probably is getting them to care about that, right? When it comes to, well, it's you know, they hear free game and they're like, oh, it's okay if I just give them away my name, that's fine, because I just want to play the free game. So that's got to be a a a tough aspect when you're, you know, talking with with kids about these is really driving home the importance and and the reason why they should care about giving away their data.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Right. And and having them take it from a fear perspective more into an empowerment perspective. So you don't need to be fearful of what's happening, but you need to have your power and consider your privacy to be a superpower. The more things you keep protected and secure, the more power you have over these kind of applications and situations.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

You know, when we talk about social media use in particular when it comes to kids, the topic of cyberbullying um is is always you know at the forefront of a lot of these conversations. It's a real thing. W what are the key recommendations that you would give to parents of kids and kids themselves who deal with this and and how to deal with it?

SPEAKER_00 4:07

That is one of the large, unfortunate capabilities of of the internet these days is being able to do something like that. It goes back to, you know, privacy is your superpower as well, because the least amount of information you share, the least amount of danger you could potentially be in. If you have a friend who all of a sudden becomes not your friend, any information you've given that person can now be used as a way to attack you on social media. Any pictures you've given them, things like that, it is easy to be used against you. From a parental perspective, um, just talking to your children about what cyberbullying is. They could be seeing it, oh, my friend's just picking on me. It's just a joke. But in reality, it's it's not. It is not appropriate in any fashion. And so making your having your child understand that. And then from a child perspective, if you see any of this happening yourself personally, if you have someone attacking you online in this manner, talk to mom and dad, talk to your parents, talk to your family, let them know, or even a teacher or a counselor, so that way they can help you to get to the bottom of this. Um, and then as far as again, you know, protecting yourself. One thing that I um wanted to just, you know, for as an example here to bring up is I had a client whose son was actually the victim of cyberbullying. And they were able to get a lot of information about this son from a website that he had created. So the son actually created a website to sell cookies, the cutest thing ever. But the son had put too much information on the site. He had put his full first name and last name, his grade of school, what school he went to, as well as his email on this site, and even his phone number too. So what I ended up doing was walking through with him step by step what he can do to remove that information. Of course, we want to still keep it available for him to advertise, but instead of saying, um, my name is, you know, John Smith at school XYZ, we could say, you know, my name is John, I'm a third grader, or my name is John and I'm a high schooler. And also making like a separate email address altogether specifically for your company instead of using your personal email address, which may have verifiable information, and never put your phone number on there. That would be the best way to go about protecting yourself is to limit the information that's available for them to use.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

Yeah, and because that email as well could be tied to so many other credentials, right? So the the less you can tie that together to your business, um, that is certainly something to take into account. You know, a lot of kids game online, of course. This is nothing new. They've got their tablets, phones, and and gaming consoles alike. And this could lead, of course, to a couple different concerns of cyber risk because you're talking about chat rooms, there's another gateway now to your home network. We're dealing with microtransactions all the time. So there's a lot of payment information that's uh tied to these games as well. What are some key areas that they need to pay attention to to secure their privacy when it comes to gaming online?

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Yeah, and I'm sure you all have heard this and have preached it yourself. Womever you're speaking with online, there's no guarantee that they are who they say they are. Um, so keep that in mind, still to this day. You never know who those people are. You never know what their capabilities are. Um, I have a friend who was hanging out over at my house and her son brought over his Xbox, and they were playing away, playing their games while um his mother and I we were hanging out and having conversation. Next thing I know, all the internet in my house drops. Everything's gone. I'm like, what in the world? Well, come to find out, one of the kids that he was playing against on Xbox had the capability to get my IP address. And once he got my IP address, he was able to get into my network and kill it. This is a really long time ago, back before segregation of networks and um that kind of uh capability. Well, it was there, but we knew about it and we could easily do it. Um, so my guest network, of course, was not completely segregated. So that has happened and that can happen to anyone at any house. And not just that, but that IP address, they can find information off of that IP address as well. So protecting your information by not giving, uh by making sure that you're behind a closed door, meaning potentially using a VPN to connect to that game instead of connecting directly. Um, what you can also do is have a separate way of making payments, whether that be an Xbox gift card, which we see them at Walmart and you know, Walgreens, all those different uh convenience stores, they sell them. So having something like that instead of your normal debit or credit card would be a great way to protect your data too. And then the other areas to pay attention to, um, and that's when you're making something online, like maybe that Roblox character, not making him look exactly like you, or not making the the area be identical to your area, just keeping that into consideration.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Makes a lot of sense. I think a lot of parents would appreciate your gift card idea because that also makes it a finite amount of money that can be spent on these in-game person.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

It's a great way to budget. You can just say, all right, kiddo, you get$100 a month. Here's your gift card, have at it.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

There you go.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

And I could even teach kids how to budget these days because, you know, like you said, everybody is gaming. So here's the opportunity to show them how to spend their money properly, right? Yep, exactly. It's a whole different conversation, though.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Yeah, gotta make decisions and and find ways to uh to weigh the pros and cons of each transaction. I I like it. Um, when we talk about some of the older kids, you know, the preteens, even teenagers, as they start going on social media, developing profiles, some are even, you know, wanting to be uh influencers at a younger and younger age. What are the main considerations when creating these profiles and uh for just using social media in general?

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Uh, social media, so scary.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

Right. We could have a 20-part series on there.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Right, exactly. There's so much, and and that goes back to empowerment, right? So being able when you approach these social media platforms to have that power of what data do I do or do not want to provide? Back when I was a kid or we were kids, it was MySpace. And on MySpace, the biggest fear or the biggest thing was just setting up your HTML settings correctly so you can have your music and your colors what you want. Um, that's no longer just the only thing to focus on. Now we're looking at teens that are getting online sooner than they should be. You've got Facebook that has a 13 and older sign, but we've got kids that are eight that are making profiles and uh not telling the truth on their age so they can get on social media. As far as being an influencer, being very conscientious again of what you are posting, main considerations would be pictures where you are showing that you are located, those travel advisories we were talking about, um, what your ambitions are as far as making this or making that, and just knowing, hey, if I'm posting this picture, I'm posting a picture of what I'm making, what can also be seen in the background? So that's why you see some of these videos with the ring lights focusing down on a tabletop and the person is making something on the table. That is a very great way to go about it because you're focused on that one location and it's not something that if you're walking around your house, they can see other aspects of your house. If you are an influencer and you're walking around your house showing different parts of it, then it's easy for someone to go on to realtor.com or one of those sales websites and see, okay, well, we know that the geolocation is XYZ. Let's look at the houses for sale in that area and see what matches this person's interior. We all know homes these days are model homes that a lot of them are cookie cutter. So we'd be able to then allow a person to narrow down you to a specific neighborhood. So it's just uh knowing what you're putting in that picture and even you know, videos, videos off a balcony, great, but you've got things in the background that you're showing in your video. So um, I don't want people to be completely scared to post pictures or post videos. I just want them to know, you know, make sure that you are keeping in mind what you have in your surroundings.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

Yeah, that's always a a good baseline to work with when making some of these decisions. And for those who want to be content creators, um, you know, I've seen some really interesting ways to maintain anonymity. Um, you know, whether it be animations, uh, if you're that creatively inclined, uh that could be a good way uh just to have your voice behind it. Using an alias, Mr. Beast is not his real name. Uh now, of course, after you gain a certain level of notoriety, your real name does become known. That's that's the nature of that, but uh that's also a good way to stay anonymous um and and kind of keep some of that privacy intact as well. So um, yeah, I I think those are a lot of good notes. Any other final thoughts on on cybersecurity for kids and teens um before we part here today, Amy?

SPEAKER_00 13:57

Mostly just to be, again, you know, extremely conscientious of what you post. Know that you don't have to post that picture, you don't have to share that information. You want to share it with your friends, share it with them at school or share it with them when you see them over your phone. Don't necessarily post it online. Also, when you are posting things on social media, know what you are putting the um audience to. You don't want it to be a public post. You want to make sure that it's narrowed down to friends instead of having that open to anyone, including not your friends. I've heard of some horror stories where people have been tracked because they had it set default on public. That's the whole thing we're trying to prevent here is you being stalked or you being found in situations, you know, where you don't want to be found. So just keeping that information in mind.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Really appreciate your time here, Amy. Thanks so much for talking with us today about this very important topic. And uh, I'm sure we'll have you again on here uh real soon. But just thankful for your time here today.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Thank you, Dan. You have a great rest of your day.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

You can listen to all episodes of Uncloaked at blackcloak.io slash podcasts or on your platform of choice. And if you're interested in becoming a member or want to learn more about how to protect your digital life, visit us at blackcloak.io. Thank you for tuning in, and we'll see you next time on Uncloaked.