Kaspersky has reminded Vietnamese parents to be wary of online dangers that their school-age, internet-using children could be vulnerable to. — Photo courtesy of the company

With schools reopening this month after the summer holidays, global cybersecurity and digital privacy company Kaspersky has reminded Vietnamese parents to be wary of online dangers that their school-age, internet-using children could be vulnerable to.

In a post on its blog, Lance Spitzner of SANS Institute summarised the three major threats to kids growing up in today’s connected world - strangers (sexual predators, sextortion and fraud); friends (cyberbullying, pranks, sextortion, and poor examples); and self (oversharing, sexting, bullying, and downloading/sharing illegal content).

According to the 2022 Disrupting Harm study done by the UNICEF, End Child Prostitution and Trafficking International and Interpol, only 36 per cent of internet users aged 12-17 in Việt Nam knew how to stay safe online.

An estimated 1 per cent were subjected to online sexual abuse and exploitation last year.

A 2023 Kaspersky report also revealed that Generation Z or those between the ages of 11 and 26 are oversharers, believing they are knowledgeable on online security but are the most susceptible to scams.

About 55 per cent of those surveyed admitted to having included their personal information on social media channels such as name, date of birth and location.

Some 72 per cent of them were unable to identify phishing scams and 26 per cent admitted to having been victimised by a phishing scam.

Yeo Siang Tiong, general manager for Southeast Asia at Kaspersky, said: “Vietnamese parents, just like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, are now raising hyper-connected children, and their other big concern today include their child being targeted by cybercriminals.

“No one can blame them since, these days, children are at risk of being lured by strangers and bullied online and even having their personal information stolen at school.”

To keep children safe online, Kaspersky said parents should have regular conversations with their children and ask them to share positive and negative things they encounter online.

Parents should take the time to read up on emerging trends, games and channels to understand how they could affect their children’s online activity, it said.

They also need to establish clear, age-appropriate ground rules about what is acceptable and what is not for their children to do online, and explain why these rules are being put in place and make them aware of the consequences of going somewhere or using tech they should not, it said.

They should make use of the cybersecurity tools available, it said.

“Parents can never hover over their children 24/7 to monitor their activities online. A smart move is to use a reliable parental control software to establish the framework for what is acceptable: how much time (and when) they can spend online, what content should be blocked, and what types of activity should be blocked (chat rooms, forums and so on).

“Parental control filters can be configured for different computer profiles, allowing you to customise the filters.” — VNS