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Cape Town – Almost a third of South African parents feel they have no control of what their children see online, a survey showed.
According to a survey by Kaspersky Lab and B2B International, 28% of parents are concerned about their children’s online habits and nearly half (47%) believe online threats are on the increase.
“Being protective is a parental instinct, but the online landscape is changing the rules. Our survey reveals that many parents fear that the number of threats facing their kids online is increasing, with so much unregulated content available,” said David Emm, principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab.
Predators have demonstrated that the internet is an easy hunting for young children.
At least 43% of respondents believe that their kids will encounter with a dangerous stranger, while 49% believe that youngsters share too much personal information online.
Attitude
In the US, Nicholas Kurtz was charged after using online tools to get girls to send him naked pictures of themselves. Patrick Killen received a 139 year sentence for his collection of nude pictures of boys.
“Young people seem to be oblivious to the dangers of oversharing. This does not imply that there is a notion of openness – rather of uninformed behaviour,” Vince Resente, researcher at Intel told Fin24 recently.
Security company Eset announced that it was providing a free version of its beta Parental Control for Android application to increase the safety of young people who own smartphones.
Despite the risk, many young people have a casual attitude toward their online security.
“I guess it comes down to a choice that those young people will change their attitude when they find out they have more things to protect like their reputation when they go to find a job or their bank account when they have some money in there,” Brian Burke, Gartner analyst specialising in enterprise architecture told Fin24.
Kaspersky said that 32% of parents also worried about accidental deletion of data as well as unintended costs through in-app purchases.
“Worryingly, the study shows that every fifth parent takes no action to keep kids safe and more than half (58%) do not even talk with them about online threats,” said Emm.
Do you worry about what your kids see online? Let us know.
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