Protecting Kids Online: Red Flags Every Parent Should Know

[00:00:21] Happy to have you along my fellow tech enthusiasts. My name is Sam Bushman. This broadcast is brought to you by Network Providers Incorporated. NetworkProvidersInc.com is the website you've got a friend in the IT business. This broadcast is available everywhere you can think of, but especially on NPITechGuys.com. Welcome to the show. Hope you're all doing absolutely fantastic. I guess it's the time of love, Jay, right? Jay Hillman It is. It is the Valentine's Day season.

[00:00:49] And the good news about that is you don't have to just do it only on Valentine's Day. You can be kind and loving and patient and respectful and appreciative to everyone. It's not only a romantic holiday, but it's a holiday for kindness and respect and civility to everybody everywhere all the time. That's why we should always be. Is AI going to be trained that way, Jay? To just be kind and loving and patient and all that? Jay Hillman We all sure hope so. Welcome to the show. Hope you're all doing fantastic. The reason I introduced it like Valentine's Day was a great day.

[00:01:18] Hey, Jay and回 to the show. out there. You know, the internet is not a place where you can just go everywhere and think it's all safe and whatever. It's not. No. But there are ways, little known ways, if you will, to see if your children are doing things on the internet and or visiting sites that you would

[00:01:45] not like them to. And this is brought to you by network providers. Now, if you go to npitechguys.com, you can sign up for the newsletter and you get basically tips on tech and help and, you know, all kinds of things that are beneficial. This is one of those. So some of the ways you can tell if your children are doing things that you don't want them to do, and all these are not 100%. If you see one of these items, that doesn't mean that it's for sure. It just means it's a red flag. And

[00:02:13] the more red flags you see, yeah, it's clues. That's right. Red flags, clues, whatever. Number one, they deleted their browsing history. The question is why? What are they hiding? Interesting. If they delete it once in a while because they can't have access to a site, so they got to delete their cache and then part of that becomes their history. I get it. Yeah, there's legitimate reasons. That's a once in a while thing, right? Right. But if they're consistently, when they're done, if you are looking behind them or just

[00:02:39] checking and you see the browser history is completely empty, either they're using a incognito browser or they're re-erasing it all when they're done. And like you said, there's legitimate reasons why you'd want to do that. Oftentimes, I'll have a site that stops working. And you hit, what is it? Control-Shift-Delete. And then you can delete your browsing history, your cache, all these different things. And it's kind of like resetting your browser so that you can start over and fix those issues. But if their history is always empty when they're

[00:03:07] done, that's a little bit of a warning sign maybe. Amen. And I have a problem with the whole idea that I got to delete my history or delete my whatever to get something to work on the internet. I mean, I get the reasons for it, but I kind of have a problem with that too. It's everything is cached in our society today. And when I say everything is cached, I don't like that. I mean, I know why they do it because it makes things faster. But we've got plenty of computing power today, Jay. The internet's plenty fast enough today to where we really shouldn't need caches. The reason we need

[00:03:35] caches is because people don't optimize their things. We've got bloatware, bloat code, bloat graphics, bloat everything everywhere all the time, right? Absolutely. And another thing that it clears is your cookies, which sometimes can get out in the weeds or be conflicting and things like that. Which I don't understand, really, because all you've got to do is basically update the cookie if it's out of date or if things aren't working or whatever else. They've had a few decades to refine this. I also wish they would give more control on specific sites. If you tell me, I go to site A and it's got a problem. What they say is, oh, empty your cache. And everybody's like,

[00:04:04] oh, no, I don't want to sign out of everything. Oh, crap. I don't want to start over. Or, oh, geez, I don't want to. But there ought to be a way to quickly press a button and just say, delete everything related to this site only. You know, Mozilla was going to pioneer that with cookie jars and kind of have everything, every site in its own thing. But I've not seen a way to easily just dump something for one site, which would be nice, would be really nice, actually. I think it's easy to accomplish. They just haven't provided a way for us to do it. Yeah. I think their main goal when they were looking at that and trying to implement that

[00:04:32] was protecting people from third-party cookies and things like that. Maybe there's another option where people can make it more useful. Delete everything for this site. And don't sign me out of Gmail and everything else that I'm into. Yeah. And don't mess with all my other sites. But look, you know, hey, with this site, what do you need to do? And the reason I say that is because then I could literally press that button to this site. I could check the most minimal things and see if it fixes my problem. And if I need to get more aggressive and delete more things related to that site, I could. But I wouldn't be

[00:05:02] worried about all my other things, right? That's where people just kind of go, oh, are you kidding me? I don't want to do that. And they're forced to, but they're frustrated. It's like whenever you have a problem with Windows. Oh, just reinstall Windows. No, come on. You guys have to create ways to not just be so catastrophic. Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, I digress except for that. Number one, I think it's really important. And I want to stress once again with this, if you just see one sign once in a while, it doesn't mean that. Okay. But

[00:05:28] if you see it consistently, it means something. And if you see this red flag of deleting your browsing history along with other flags, then the concern starts to heighten rather quickly. Number two, the ads showing up are questionable. Marketers use these targetings to get you to come back to websites. And so if you're seeing ads that make you go, then maybe your kids are visiting that site. Now, that's not always true, but a lot of times it is true, Jay.

[00:05:55] Right. Because even when you anonymize things and stuff, sometimes there's marketing, advertising numbers and things that they can use fingerprinting of your browser and things. So they can kind of track where you are and the things that you're interested in. Google has done its whole new system to try to get categories of things that you're interested in. So if you're seeing like a lot of, you know, things that are questionable when you're browsing with your

[00:06:23] kid's browser or with their profile, you know, it's kind of an indication that, you know, they may be visiting questionable sites and these marketers may be just retargeting them. Yeah. Well, let me tell you what happens too. And these algorithms are pretty smart. I'm going to give you a personal example. And I don't want people to take this out of context or anything else, but I'll just, I'll just give you this example because it's real. It's raw. It's true. Okay. So I searched on the internet about love relating to a love song that somebody gave me that

[00:06:51] was legitimately safe and good and appropriate. But next thing you know, I'm starting to get all these things coming up going. Um, how, so how to seduce a woman to make her fall in love with you with just your smile or how to do this or how to get this or how to, or dating apps or what it was all rowdy where I'm just like, okay, no thanks. Well, anyway, if you click on those things and

[00:07:15] pursue those, then the avalanche comes. But if you ignore that stuff and type in other search phrases that are on the up and up legitimate and everything else before you know it, the algorithms take that stuff away and bring back normal stuff to you. I know that sounds crazy, but that, that literally has happened to me before. Yeah, that can happen on any platform really. It doesn't matter whether it's

[00:07:40] Google or Tik TOK or Facebook. Um, they're all trying to, uh, look into your life based on how you interact with that site to see what are you interested in so they can serve more of it. They want to keep your eyeballs on the screen. Yeah. And I didn't click on any of those different weird things. And so they eventually just went away, Jay. And at first you might think, Oh Sam, you're hacked. You just don't know it. No, I don't think so because I'm telling you they went away and I didn't click on any of

[00:08:05] them, but I know that they came up. Um, and so a lot of times it's kind of saying, Oh, you're interested in that. Let me see really what more you're interested in that. It's like category one, two, and three in terms of levels. Oh, you typed in love. Let's see what kind of love you're looking for, Sam. Yeah, exactly. And so then the subcategories kind of come anyway. So again, if you see weird ads, that doesn't mean that they're intentionally doing it might mean they've clicked on the wrong thing.

[00:08:30] It might mean that, um, it's just like I told you, but again, you put that with the deleting of history and the ads showing up and now you go, okay, wait a minute. Yeah. If you're getting three out of five on this list, you're, you know, look into it and think about it. Yeah. All right. Number three, they hide when they're using their devices. A rule of thumb should be no devices in bedrooms, bathrooms, or any of the rooms that's not clearly out in the open where you can see what's going on.

[00:08:57] That to me is one of the biggest ones of all, Jay. I agree a hundred percent third in this list, but I would put that number one in terms of, of importance on the list. Yeah. They should be using their devices in public areas, in the living room, in the dining room, in the kitchen, even, you know, at the, maybe the bar stool or something like that. Sure. There's no, there's no reason to be off hidden off, sequestered by yourself on a device, uh, as a minor, I don't think ever really. Well, and I say this to my kids too, that, that applies to me too.

[00:09:25] Jay. Right. I mean, I don't have anything that I need to be sequestered and hidden and in the back room that you can't see now there's exceptions again, all these things, for example, Valentine's day. And that's why I started out the show with Valentine's day. It might be that your kid's trying to get something for mom. It might be that I'm trying to get something for my wife. So again, if you just take one of these and a snapshot, it might not be true, but what you want to do is

[00:09:50] watch these signs for long realities. Right. Yeah. Right around Valentine's day. And a couple of your kids go take off for a minute and whisper. And, you know, I remember one time my kids took off and we're like, where are you going? They're just like, Oh, we're just going around. We're just leaving. And it was a special day. So we kind of left it alone. Well, it came back and they actually went to their brother's house and they created a song to sing for me and my wife. Um, for, I think it was father's day or something like that. Okay. So you got to give kids a little bit of trust,

[00:10:18] a little bit of benefit of the doubt. These signs are need to be watched, but don't get too crazy on them because you're going to road trust too. If you're not very careful, you got to, you got to use this with a measure, but I'm telling you right now, if they're deleting their browsing history, if they're hiding out all the time and weird ads show up on their stuff, Oh boy, you know, you've got a problem at that point. I would also for friend, I would also add to number three real quick before we move on is, uh, put your computers in your screens, like in public places and make sure the

[00:10:44] screens are facing, you know, put your desk up against the wall rather than having the, the monitor facing, uh, Ian where people can, you know, where they can minimize or close out of something before you. Yeah. So by the time they know you're looking, they can already click off of it or do this or do that. Don't do those things. Yeah. Just the transparency and the traffic helps keep things above board. I think. Yeah. I literally have monitors on some of my desks and stuff. You can literally see it from the front door. Right. It's just the way my house is kind of designed.

[00:11:13] Anyway, I find that interesting. Number four though, friend your kids on social media, you know, who your kids hang out with in real life, right? So same thing goes for social media. Find out who they're hanging around with, who they're interacting with, who's following them, who's, you know, a lot of that's really a telltale Jay. That's, and to me, that's not a negative one because if your kids are on the up and up, it's like, why wouldn't I follow you son? Uh, you're into basketball and I want to know what happens with your team. And I want to know when you guys win and lose and

[00:11:41] what people are saying. And I want to watch the clips that relate to, you know, videos other people took and right or dance or whatever it be. Um, I'm not spying on your life, son or daughter. I want to be involved in your life and Hey, I have your kids, your friends over to my house and feed them dinner, make wings for them or whatever we do when they hang out. And so what's wrong with me, you know, kind of keeping up on this. And I think that's a very positive one that can be done in a positive light. It provides protection, but it's a very positive one. If you approach it correctly,

[00:12:08] Jay, I think so. And I say, if you're going to let your kids have social media, you should definitely be on their list. I might go a little bit further though. And I would say, and there's a lot of people that are, um, of this opinion experts, everything else. I mean, we've seen Australia recently banned social media for minors. We've seen, um, some States that are saying social media shouldn't, you have to have your parents permission. If you're under 16, I think Florida is one of them. Um, maybe Massachusetts too, but a lot of people are just saying, you know what?

[00:12:34] Social media is not really good for kids. Kids get enough social with their own friend groups and their things. There's too much risk of exposure to people that aren't mature enough to kind of, to handle it. You get these posers and predators and stuff on social media that target your kids. I personally, I would say, uh, your kids don't really need social media. They got enough social circles. Usually the way that it is, they don't need the greater internet or, or people they don't even know being their friends on social media. Um, let them wait till they're 18 for that.

[00:13:02] So I always have them wait till they're 18 at least before they can get social media. I've made a couple of unique exceptions though. Right. Um, one of them is my son mows lawns and I let him get a, uh, a, uh, like a, like a Venmo or whatever you want to say cash app or whatever so that people could pay him for instance. Well, that's that, I don't think that's social media really. I understand, but, but it is because you can literally on Venmo, for example, you can see what people have bought and sold and stuff. Yeah. You can follow accounts and see those things.

[00:13:31] And so it's kind of social media ask, if you will, people basically, um, in a social way, go to dinner and then one person pays for the check and the four other people Venmo them stuff. Right. And then you can see who bought what online. So I know that's a little bit of a weird example. Another example is my daughter made some things. And so at 16, we let her get a Pinterest account. Um, and a, what's the other account? Probably Etsy or something. Yeah.

[00:13:57] An Etsy account. And between the two, cause the, the, um, Etsy by itself doesn't really have any marketing capability to it per se compared to some of the other ways. So anyway, we made a few exceptions, but then my wife joined and followed my child on those things too. So there's a blend there that's really important. And that's a big positive one that I can think of. Yeah, absolutely. I'd agree. And there's five, there's other exceptions like, um, you know,

[00:14:26] a cash app account. Sometimes I think it's great to teach kids about money and to give them their own card and, um, things like that to where they can learn to do that. And you know, that kind of blurs the line, like you said, of social media, but there's lots of stuff that kids can do, but you know, being on Facebook, Instagram, especially things like Snapchat, it just gets kind of seamy and like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't let kids on that. I don't think. Well, especially when you bring up Snapchat, there's levels too. So one level is that, like I mentioned, some of these things that aren't

[00:14:53] really social media, but they kind of blur that line. Then there's some things that are more social media than others. Snapchat is like the most social media of all of them. Hey, I'm going to send you some stuff, Jay, and it's going to disappear. Exactly. I'll give you an example of one that is a social media, but I let kids use, which is telegram. But what I do is I have one account that's shared amongst many kids. And so they have different groups and stuff, but everybody's in it. And there's always oversight either from siblings or parents or people that are in it.

[00:15:20] And so it's, you have one shared account and that helps from, you know, anything problematic turning up, you know? Yeah. You can also look at social media too. The old social media would share everything with everybody, make it as big, as gnarly and crazy as you can. Right. And the future in my mind of social media is going to be more of circles, people that you relate to personally. And so I'm not on Instagram for the masses. I'm on Instagram for my small circle of friends and

[00:15:49] people and family. And then I can be a little bit more sharing of photos and a little bit more. And Instagram's like that a lot more than Facebook, Facebook, and especially like MySpace, they kind of seem like the Pokemon of, you know, collect as many friends as you can get anywhere. Yes. But Instagram is more for your circles kind of thing. And I think that's smart too. I'm also a big fan of Life360. And again, I don't know if that's social media. It's not really,

[00:16:14] it's more of a tracking app, but it's more of a keep tabs on. So I have circles for my family. And a lot of people say, I don't want to be part of that. That's just spying on your kids. My response is no, it's not. I don't, I don't look at it that way. First of all, I'm a parent and they're a kid. Okay. They're minors and I'm responsible for them. Number one. Number two, I've got grown up children that are like, dad, I'd love to be in your circle because I don't track my adult kids, but if they're coming over, I know when they arrive and I can

[00:16:42] get up from my work or finish what I'm doing. And when they come to the door, I'm ready. Or if they're coming and they're not there yet, and I think they should be, I can quickly check on the app and see where they're at. And they're like, oh, they're driving. They'll be here in a little bit. I don't spy on people, but it is nice to know. And if there's ever any kind of emergency or anything else or a phone lost or this or that, you know, it helps with that. There's a lot of positives. Very helpful. So to me, it's, it's how this technology is used really. Right? Yeah, absolutely. And I would encourage that too. Like 360. If your kids have phones, uh, you know,

[00:17:11] say you got a 16 year old that's got a job at a burger King or something or wherever they're doing, maybe they're mowing lawns, whatever. Um, and they need a phone cause they, they need the communication. I would definitely have 360 on there. I have it with my own family. A lot of times, a lot of times kid needs phone when they turn 16 too, cause it helps them get around with maps and stuff like that. And, and to me, that's actually a positive cause then they're not going and see to your bad neighborhood. They're not way off track out in the weeds somewhere there. They know where they're

[00:17:36] going. And anyway, there's a lot of, a lot of good, but the fifth one is really important too. And I guess I would say these five cannot be put in an order cause they're all so critical. Five, talk to your kids. Make sure you talk to your kids about your expectations when they're online. Don't just assume that they understand your expectations. Um, and you know, relate it to real life. So sometimes kids, if you're not careful, just think, Oh, this is just playtime.

[00:18:03] It's not real life. It doesn't matter. They need to understand that social media or the internet itself. Yes, it's virtual. I get it, but it is an extension of real life. Let's not be fooled into anything different. Jay. Right. Exactly. Another, um, thing that you can do is for kids, especially is have a phone that is like the family device. It doesn't necessarily belong to one person. So they, they maybe keep them from getting too personal on that one device because it's a

[00:18:29] shared device or, you know, Johnny may take it this time. Then Sally takes it when she's going somewhere else. Uh, I know, I think Sam has done that before in his family. I think that's where I got the idea from because we do that. Yeah. Now I don't, I only have one kid of my eight children. Only one of them is under 18. So, so they probably have their own by now. It's different now, but yes, in the day we had a family phone and there was like five kids that shared it and they went somewhere that they needed it. And sometimes they'd be like, well, we both need to go somewhere. We both need a phone. And then I'd be like, okay, take mine. I'd actually give my kid my phone on a

[00:18:56] once in a while occasion. Right. If I was just staying home or whatever like that. And, uh, then we had a home phone a lot of the time too, where they could basically answer if we were gone and there was a few people at home. Okay. You don't need the phone at home. You can use the home phone here. That is. And I know that's antiquated for a lot of people, but for us, you still have a home phone, Sam? Yeah. Ah, nice. But it's only for my business. Oh no, no, no. I was talking about a home personal phone. Nope. I do. I have an Uma line. That's just

[00:19:22] a home phone. I mean, it runs on the internet. It's not a landline like traditionally, but it is the phone that stays at the house and it's, it's the equivalent of what the landline used to be. Yeah. And when I had, again, you know, younger kids that stayed at home and multiple people that didn't have devices and stuff, I had that too. Now everybody's got their own device. So there's not near as much of a need and as kids grow up, it becomes less. I want to throw out one more though. So network providers had these five. Jay, do you have anything you'd like to add to this list? Cause I, I got a couple of things. No, I've pretty much been adding as we go along. So.

[00:19:53] All right. Well, the one thing I want to add to this list is this. I basically use Apple's capability to control my children's phone and I put it in children's mode. And so for them to download a new app, I have to approve that download or they can't download anything. Right. That's smart. And so I think that's one thing that you can really do. And so you're saying to yourself, you know, I don't mind if my kid uses this app or that app or whatever,

[00:20:22] but I want to make sure they don't just download any app they want to. And that's where a lot of problems start because kids innocently start into something and then it kind of gets south, but they're intrigued or it gets south and they feel like they kind of can't get out. And so one of the great ways in my mind is to prevent what's on the phone and what things they can access. So when they're 10, they don't need access to a browser at all. Right. Okay. They just don't,

[00:20:49] but yet, you know what, if there's an innocent game that that's for kids, I don't mind if we install that on their phone. And then we also control it by hours, Jay, you know what your phone is normal from eight to eight or whatever it is, eight to 10 or whatever. And after that overnight though, it's just, it's, it's, you don't have access to things. Yeah, I agree. Don't be fooled though by some of that in thinking, cause there are people that think, well, I've locked out the

[00:21:14] browser. And so that's cool. But I've seen where kids, even on iPhone, you could, all you got to do is get into any application that will link out to a browser. And then you have access to a browser, even if the browser has been turned off on the phone. So kids are, are clever and they're crafty and they will sometimes find ways around and don't sit back and just think, Oh, I got it covered. I know what's going on. I'm caught up because you're not, and your kids are cleverer than you think. And that's why I started out by saying, approve the apps one at a time

[00:21:45] and lock down a browser. And you know, when you approve an app, you need to understand, does that app have the ability to go out to the net and do certain things? Exactly. A lot of them do. And a lot of them even have features that you wouldn't think that open up a browser for, for example, I'll give you one example, Canva. If you have the Canva app, you think totally safe, great. Okay. Well, Canva does all of its authentication and credentials on the web. Well, once you get a browser open there, you can sometimes just change the address

[00:22:15] and go somewhere else on it. And you can launch a browser out of Canva. They may have that fixed by now, but you know, there are, and that's just only an example of apps. I've seen that before. I've seen people do that with telegram telegram. You, you send somebody a link to something and you can view it. Well, if you can get to the address bar or you can get to a place like you could send yourself www.google.com. And while you can't get to the address browser, once you get into Google with a search engine window, you can go from wherever you want from there. So just, just be aware and

[00:22:44] be careful. Yes. And it's also reminds me for littler children, like I don't have teeny children, right? But for little children, you know, one of the ways to do it is don't necessarily maybe get them a phone, get them one of those little watches that has 10 phone numbers that they can call. Those are pretty cool. And they're cool. And they're neat, neat. They're harder to lose too. They let your kid kind of, you know, be up in the modern world and communicate and you can know where your kid is and all that kind of stuff. All the benefits are there, but yet a lot of the

[00:23:12] potential pitfalls are not there. So restricting by application, restricting by what hours things are available, uh, by restricting, you know, one of the other things we used to do when my kids were little is we would have them check in their phones at night. You know what, when it's nine o'clock and you're going to bed, put your phone, here's a, we have a bank of chargers on a shelf. Uh, it's this device that you can charge like 10 devices, right? Yep. And, um, so it's just like, Hey, put your phone on there. And so me and my wife would just walk by and look and Hey, everybody put their phone up.

[00:23:40] We know they don't have any phones. Very smart. And so little things like that. It's creative. It's being involved in your children's life. It's doing your very best to make it a positive experience, not a negative one. You know what? I'm not trying to lock you down, son or daughter. I love you and I want to protect you. And it's a crazy world out there. And we're going to make sure that we do things that keep us all safe. No regrets, right? Yeah. This is, so it's, it's how you teach your children about it too. That matters a great article by NPI and a welcome reminder

[00:24:10] for everyone. Yes, indeed. You got to dig that. Um, Netflix, I don't know what's going on with these guys, but every time Netflix is around, they raise prices, Jay, Netflix raising prices again, just a little tidbit for you. On the next show, on the next show, we'll dig into some of the details, but I'm just telling you right now, we used to think that the internet would have a la carte channels that would be cheaper. Not so it's going South in a hurry. All right.

[00:24:38] That's a wrap. Thanks for being alongside network providers, Inc. NPI tech guys.com. Make it a great tech day. Will you? Hey, thanks.