7 Data Privacy Tips You Can Learn from Teens

2017-04-13 10_28_18-teens – Google Search

Today’s teenagers are always online, always connected to the Internet, the world and each other. Wherever you look, you see teens and young adults texting, tweeting, liking, taking selfies, posting pictures, and staring at their phones, tablets, and laptops, doing who knows what on their preferred social media.

This is the generation that grew up with this technology, and it’s their world, whether it made sense to you as their parent, grandparent or if you’re just an older observer.

Since teens are so eager to share and connect, many people believe that they don’t think about safety and that this might put them and everyone around them in danger. Not only is this false, but it’s the complete opposite of the truth. Teens are very concerned about safety and privacy, and very much aware of what they can or can’t do online. In fact, we’ve even created a list of seven things about privacy safety that they could probably even teach you. So let’s see what they are.

Vaguebook

This one is pretty much exactly what you’re thinking, and it’s all about being vague instead of giving away all the details that might be used against you. For example, most teens wouldn’t say that they bought a $200 handbag, because mentioning money pretty much always attracts thieves (online and offline kinds), but instead, they would only post a new selfie with the said handbag and leave everyone who cares about the price wondering. Sure, they might mention it in a private chat, but you most likely won’t see them bragging about it everywhere they can.

You might be wondering if this is true and if teens really can restrain themselves when it comes to things like this, and research says yes. They’re a lot smarter and safety-conscious that most people believe.

Lie Just A Bit

Even though honesty is a good and noble thing, the Internet is not a good and noble place, and it most definitely isn’t filled with good and noble people. Teens know this, on some level at least. They’re familiar with how giving up too much of their private information can come back and hurt them, and they’re getting better and better when it comes to online deception. This might seem fake, but it’s a smart policy, and it helped in many situations. As long as it works, and as long as they’re safe, not many parents would be concerned about a few small lies, especially when it comes to little things like saying you live in the next town over, or spelling your name a bit differently.

Untag Photos

Posting photographs is one of those new trends that most of the older people just don’t understand. But when it comes to teens, they love it. For example, the whole point of Instagram is to post pictures, and there’s not much else to do there if you’re not interested in that. One of the options on these pictures is to tag people. For example, let’s say that there was a party, a lot of people were invited, a lot of pictures have been taken, and now they’re all online.

Some of the teens might decide to remove their tag from those pictures, for whatever reason. Perhaps they don’t like how they look on the picture, or they were caught doing something they don’t want everyone to see as soon as they check out their profile. This is a good and smart thing to do because it also falls under the category of revealing personal details. The fewer people like identity thieves know about you, the less successful they are in copying you, and there’s a bigger chance that institutions like banks might realize that something is off after studying your stolen credit card reports. Therefore, untagging can protect more than just your reputation, it can also protect your identity as well.

Have A Secret Account

Some of the teens have figured out that having a secret account might be beneficial to them. This works in a way that you can use one of your accounts, a public one, to post funny stuff, track your favorite celebrities, play games and alike, while the other one, the secret one, can have higher privacy settings in place, and can be safely used to keep their closest friends updated on what they’re up to and what’s going on in their personal lives.

Social Media Maintenence Performing

When you look at your friends’ list, what do you see? Are you one of those people who only keep close friends or followers, or do you also have a bunch of people that you’ve never even met, can’t even remember when you became “friends,” and don’t know who they even are?

When it comes to “clearing out” friends lists, young people and teenagers aren’t exactly shy; they’ll openly unfriend or even block those who they don’t like. This isn’t always done for the right reasons, and more often than not, it’s a school drama thing, but it’s still a good way to protect yourself from those who might want to harm you.

Update Privacy Settings

Another thing you can do to protect yourself is to update your privacy settings. Teenagers have proved that they’re very much aware of their privacy and how to control how much they’re sharing. Studies have shown that more than 60% of the teenagers on Facebook have their profiles set on ‘private’ and that they had no problem with figuring out how to control privacy settings.

Think About Third Parties

Many teenagers can set great examples when it comes to things like information oversharing, protecting your account and stuff like that. That’s a good thing. On the other hand, the bad thing is that they don’t do it for the right reason. They’re concerned about how they look online, but they don’t think that much about the information they’re giving away. They don’t think, nor care, about third parties, like business companies or the government itself, and if they’re checking out their info.

Your online life and interests might leave clues about what kind of person you are, what you’re interested in, and what can you be persuaded to buy. This information is of great importance to advertisement companies, and they’ll often pay good money for that kind of information about their consumers.

Also, everything that you do online is monitored by your ISPs, but it also might be viewed by other institutions, like the NSA. To secure your data, use VPNs. VPNs will mask your IP address, encrypt your data, unblock geo-restrictions and much more, while giving you anonymity, hiding your actions as well as your location, and allow you a safe browsing experience.

Remember that today’s teenagers grew up in this age, and they’re perfectly familiar and comfortable with how it works. Even if this is not the case with you, you can still learn these things and protect yourself from online dangers.

Use a VPN

By using a VPN, you can learn from your teen’s knowledge about internet privacy. Many teens use VPNs with video games, but you can use it to protect your information or work data.

Check out one of these VPNs.

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