Kids start getting their own email accounts at a young age, and it's a popular way to keep in touch with their friends and collaborate on school assignments.
As a parent, safeguarding your kids when they're online takes effort, attention and the right approach. You're not trying to tell your kid that the Internet is a scary place, because their friends will just tell them otherwise.
What's important is educating them about safe practices when communicating online and by email.
Safe Email for Children
If your kid has just signed up for his or her first email account, all the basic rules for email protection apply to him as well. Here are a few more tips to bear in mind:
- Step 1: Remind your kid not to share his email address anywhere on the Internet. Spammers have developed sophisticated programs that they use to harvest email addresses – any email address that appears on any public webpage, blog or forum post can be harvested and used as a spam target.If your child's email address is picked up by spammers, he may find himself receiving spam emails containing content that's highly inappropriate, especially for kids.
- Step 2: Tell your kid not to open suspicious emails and attachments from people that he doesn't know. Kids are curious. Their interest may be piqued by suggestive or exciting subject headers and they are more easily fooled by claims that they've won prizes.Warn your kid that opening emails and attachments from strangers is dangerous, and that doing so might lead to his computer being corrupted by viruses and the entire home network being compromised.
- Step 3: Remind kids not to talk to strangers online. 89% of sexual predators trawl Internet chat rooms and use instant messaging to contact their targets. They will also ask a child for his or her email address, which may lead to exchanging phone numbers and other personal details.There are some subscription-based email service providers such as SafenSoundMail that offer protection for children from unwanted email by using filters and allowing parents to decide the level of control appropriate for their kids. Always supervise your children's online activities, know their friends, and ask them who they regularly communicate with via email.