Help your kids set boundaries by encouraging them never to do anything that's outside their comfort zones, such as sharing passwords or talking to strangers.īeyond that, we can help our kids learn to identify common tricks that scammers use to phish for information, Wilkey Oh added. Regularly discuss online safety, responsible behavior, and how to respond to offensive comments. "Typically, phishing is an attempt to get someone to reveal private information, and then the thief will sell that information or use it to steal the victim's identity," Wilkey Oh said.Īs soon as kids start using devices, parents and caregivers should begin a dialogue about online harassment, Wilkey Oh said. What to do if your child is harassed by a scammerĪccording to Erin Wilkey Oh, the content director of family and community engagement at Common Sense Media, what happened to my son was a form of phishing, when a sender baits someone into interacting with them. Most troubling, one of the officers said it happened all the time. Beyond blocking the number on his device and deleting the message, we had no recourse. But because the scammer hadn't addressed my son by name, there wasn't anything they could do, nor any way to prove that they knew they were scamming a child. The local police were called, and I went to the school to meet them. My son told his teacher, who immediately took the watch and alerted the principal. The text, which seemed harmless - "Hey, why haven't I heard from you lately?" - turned out to be anything but. After a little prodding, I found out he'd responded to a message sent by someone from an unknown number. The explicit image had left him distressed, rightfully so. In tears, he shared he'd been texted a graphic photo. When I saw an incoming call on my son's Apple Watch during school hours, I knew something was up.
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