Useful information
This useful information page has been created to compile all the valuable & reusable 'good stuff' in one place, so you don't have to trawl through the blog. Generated by discussions following our Safe And Secure Online presentations, this is a collection of actions you can perform to protect your family.
Reducing your digital footprint.
We’ve written this guide on how to reduce your digital footprint to help you on your way. A smaller a footprint you have, the harder you are to find. The harder you are to find, its more difficult to be targetted for fraud, bullying and abuse.
Public Wifi
Don’t. Just don’t. If the demonstration was given on the night was not enough to persuade you why public wifi is unsafe, then there aren’t words we can type here to make you safer.
Gaming
Part of the risk to young players arises from the social aspect of internet connected gaming. Secure their online Gaming Tags using this guide to ensure that they are appropriate.
DNS Settings
DNS is like the telephone directory for the internet. It performs the translation of human readable formats (e.g. unshakeablesalt.com) into machine usable Internet Protocol addresses (e.g. 80.68.1.5). It is quite common for your home internet router to use your own Internet Service Providers own DNS Service, with all the devices on your home network asking your router for DNS translations.
For mobile devices (phones, tablets and laptops used outside of your home), it is worth changing the DNS on the device – rather than on the network. This will ensure when the device is using other networks (including 3G / 4G) , you can offer the same protection.
FamilyShield is a special (free) service offered by OpenDNS meant for home users who want to keep their children from seeing inappropriate images on their computers. FamilyShield will always block domains categorized in our system as Tasteless, Proxy/Anonymizer, Sexuality, or Pornography.
To use FamilyShield, you should set your DNS server entries as: 208.67.222.123 and 208.67.220.123.
To use OpenDNS without the Family shield filtering, you should set your DNS server entries as: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.
For instructions on how to do this, search on https://start.duckduckgo.com for “change dns settings” and then the appropriate device or operating system you want to change. ( iphone, ios, android, windows 10, Mojave, osx)
iPhone Device Settings
At the majority of SafeAndSecure events that I present, I get asked a couple of frequent questions. “How do I lock down my child’s device – what iPhone Controls should I enable?”.
The most important part of this process is having a conversation with your offspring. It’s more about letting them know what is safe and acceptable behaviour, rather than a hard technical restriction that you want to enforce. The settings can only be used as a guide to reflect what you want your child to learn, not be the safety barrier between right and wrong.
