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In this article, we’ll go over several tips, strategies, and best practices you can pass onto your employees to help them keep their children safe from online criminals, scams, and other threats. This includes removing geolocation tags from photos, teaching children how to recognize and avoid online scams, and more.
For kids, the internet is an invaluable resource, and a gateway to entertainment, education, socialization, and other resources and services that can increase the quality of their lives and help them grow.
Sadly though, the internet has a dark side. It can be a place where children are targeted and taken advantage of, which can result in serious consequences, including mental health issues and financial damage.
But here’s the good news: with the proper education and monitoring, children can use the internet safely and enjoy all the wonderful things it has to offer. Much of your employee population are parents, and as an HR department, caring for their wellbeing should extend to their families as well. Here are some helpful tips and strategies that you and your employees can use to create a safe and welcoming digital experience for children.
How to help your employees take charge of their online presence
While many platforms and devices have built-in safety features to help protect people, if users don’t use best practices to safeguard and manage their online presence, they may be exposing themselves, and their children, to additional risk. Here are a few best practices that your employees should keep in mind to help manage their online presence and protect their children from harm.
Geolocation tags
Did you know every digital camera embeds geolocation data in each image as a default? When you first activate a smartphone, it usually asks if it can track your location. Some people may choose to enable this service because many different apps and features rely on it, such as map apps.
Fortunately, anyone can set their cameras, including those on smartphones, to not store geolocation data (a.k.a., “tags”) with every photo. Some people want that metadata embedded in photos for their personal use, but don't want to share that data online.
The good news is that everyone can remove the metadata from a specific photo before it's uploaded to a public platform. And many social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter automatically strip EXIF (geolocation) data from uploaded images. But, there's no indication that they delete this data. Meaning, if Facebook is breached, your EXIF could potentially become exposed.
Services may or may not remove the data they say they are. The more reliable option is for people to remove that geolocation data either as a default setting or on an application-by-application basis.
To help protect children, the safest and easiest course may be to setup their phones so they do not to embed the geodata in pictures.
Other ways photos give clues away
Embedded data isn't the only way a person can inadvertently share location information.
Pictures taken at a kid's soccer game could show signs with the name of the park where they play. Their team jerseys can give away the name of their school or league. And with search engines and mapping tools, locating where these photos are taken and using clues to determine other information is easier than ever.
Not to mention how the slow buildup of information posted over time can collectively provide clues. A little here, a little there, and soon a complete “picture” can form. This includes information like the layout of a home, when kids are home alone, whether an employee has pets that may pose a problem to an intruder, or the locations that they frequent such as parks, restaurants, and other places. While it’s totally normal to want to share events and adventures with your family and friends, it’s important to ensure that you’re sharing photos responsibly and not sharing private information.
Parents should make sure private online albums are protected with strong passwords and consider whether photos taken with a phone should automatically upload to the cloud.
They should also ensure that their cloud accounts are protected by strong security features such as two-factor authentication and review their social media privacy settings to make sure they’re what they want. Parents should also make sure that photos posted by them or their children don’t reveal private information they don’t want to share publicly.
In fact, parents may want to think twice about posting photos of their children on social media, at all.
Staying safe on social media
Social media platforms are always finding ways to ensure that young children don’t use them, however, kids are still finding ways to create accounts. Despite social platforms requiring users to be at least 13 years old, almost 40 percent of children between 8 and 12 already have a social media account.
Although social media platforms often have safety settings to keep their users safe and prevent abuse, it can be easy for bad actors to contact children on social media to launch scams and gather valuable information for use in other schemes. Bad actors can also pretend to be other people to gather the trust of children and develop a relationship with them, often posing as a child or peer.
Keep this checklist in mind to help keep kids safe on social platforms—whether you follow it yourself or pass the advice along.
Instruct children to refrain from using their full names. Encourage them to use a nickname or create a social media-only “handle” (or alias).
Check the privacy settings for each app to control who can see their content and profiles. They should only let people they trust and know see their content.
Ensure that children know that they shouldn’t accept friend requests from people they don't know personally.
Monitor children’s social media use by viewing their profiles, messages, and other content to ensure their children are using the platform safely. Digital safety tools that alert parents to inappropriate content and messages are very effective at preventing this kind of activity.
Teach kids to think carefully about what information they're posting online, as things that are posted on the internet are visible to everyone, and may be saved by others even if they delete it.
Common scams targeting kids
Of all the online threats kids face, scams and fraud can be the most dangerous, because they can have serious consequences like financial harm or even damage to a child’s mental health. With losses to digital crime skyrocketing with $47 billion lost to scams and fraud in 2024 alone, keeping kids safe from fraud has never been more important. Scams can also result in stolen information that can be used in identity theft, which can metastasize into other problems like being unable to attain a loan, damage to your child’s credit, and more.
Here are some common scams that your employees should keep an eye out for and educate their children on:
Sextortion scams: These scams involve a bad actor convincing a child to send explicit photos of themselves, which they then use to coerce the child to send more or blackmail them for payment. involve a bad actor convincing a child to send explicit photos of themselves, which they then use to coerce the child to send more or blackmail them for payment.
Gaming scams – This involves enticing children with free in-game currency or rare items in exchange for personal information or payment, allowing the criminal to steal payment information, funds, or receive information they can use in later scams or identity theft.
Online shopping scams: Criminals create ads for toys, games, and other discounted items that children then purchase, only to find out that the items don’t exist or completely different than what they purchased. This can allow criminals to steal funds or payment information.
Fake contests and giveaways: In this scam, criminals will advertise or offer entry into a contest or giveaway, usually requiring a payment or addresses, names, or other personal information.
How to keep kids safe from scams and fraud
Here are some helpful tips parents can use to keep their kids safe from scams and fraud:
Do not store payment information on a child’s device as it prevents them from making impulsive purchases or providing scammers with payment information. If a child asks to purchase something online, parents should verify what they are purchasing first.
Parents should teach their children to never send explicit photos or photos of themselves to someone they don’t know.
Parents should install a scam protection solution on their child’s device to ensure that if they come across a scam link or message, they will immediately be alerted.
Empower your employees to keep their kids online
If you want to help your employees ensure a safe online experience for their children, the first step is to make sure they have the resources they need. Providing employees with educational resources, starting with this article, can give them the tools they need to enhance their kids safety. You can also offer employees benefits that provide the tools and resources parents need to keep their kids safe online. Allstate Identity Protection’s employee benefit provides several tools the keep kids safe online, including:
Scam and fraud education resources and notifications
Family digital safety tools powered by Bark, which include content monitoring, screen time management, and more
Scam protection for devices, which monitors emails, messages, calendar notifications, web pages, and more