Lesson ideas - e-safety

[sscott]

Hitting a creative wall! At the start of each year I teach about the rights and responsibilities of being online via social networking, email, text and so forth. Also have to discuss trolling, copyright law, computer misuse and plagiarism. I taught a lesson today on online trolling in relation to Fabrice Muamba and Tom Daley but want to develop this further. This is your chance to influence my teaching over the next few weeks! (without payment!)

Ideas are welcome!

[pratty]

Here's some stuff you could talk about off the top off my head:

Nigerian Scams and other "if it's too good to be true...." offers.
Having multiple passwords, ie not having the same password for everything.
Checking the address of a suspicious link before you click it.
Phishing, spoof webites (and how to spot them, see above).
Dangers of constantly being logged into an account if other people could use your computer.
Being careful with uploading pictures, videos of yourself.
Meeting people in person that you only "know" online.

[Freestyler]

Have a word on Facebook scams. The latest one is that stupid Crimestoppers one that's doing the rounds:



A simple 5 second Google search (you're already AT your PC, for Christ's sake! ) quickly debunked this, but almost everyone I know just mindlessly parroted it on, willing to believe any old crap they read. Much like the Morgan Freeman "death announcement" via Facebook, too. Or those horrible "Forward this if you hate animal paedophilia" chain mails.

Teach your guys to get their world info from proper news sources and never, ever forward Facebook rubbish. Ever.

[retrogarden]

I made this a while back when you could make Facebook landing pages - https://www.facebook.com/pages/When-I-R ... 4949752878 - as people were liking things they probably shouldn't.....

[the_hawk]

I think it's fantastic this sort of thing is being taught in schools.

In our school there were 2 Computer Science teachers teachers for our A-Levels, one was a maths teacher who knew very little about computers, and one was a French teacher who appeared to actively hate them!

[Mayhem]

- the importance of keeping the PC's OS patched and up to date (roll into security with malware protectors)
- browser choice, pros and cons of each browser
- basic first steps you should do if you find your PC is infected

[sscott]

Thanks guys! The scam and phishing bits will definitely be incorporated...

[Helensification]

Following on from the suggestion by pratty

Being careful with uploading pictures, videos of yourself.
Meeting people in person that you only "know" online.

It's worth adding to that the consequences of sending videos to 'on-line' friends thinking you trust them.
I have seen how that can lead to on-line bullying/stalking and threats and there is very little the police can do to help.

I could send you details of the actual incident if you think it would be of use to you.

[psj3809]

Might not be as common now but years ago there used to be websites when you bought something the payment page to put in your card details etc was http:, should aways be https: (the s stands for secure). Most payment pages are https but there 'might' be some old skool ones still as a standard page of http which isnt good news at all.

But emails with logon links from banks, you know the phising emails, banks will never send you an email asking you to login, they may send you an email saying 'please check your account' but you then login yourself not via an email.

If you get a phising email, hover over the link and it'll often have some crazy russian link instead of www.hsbc.com

If you are in a cybercafe or using a computer at a school/college always log out of a site properly, clicking X in the corner to close the browser wont necessarily log you out.

Saying that common sense helps, the amount of times i have friends stupidly forwarding emails saying 'is this legit' when its soooo clear its not (saying that people often reply to 1 post scammers here with 'welcome to the forum' despite the scammers initial post having links at the bottom for louis vuitton etc ! Duhhhh !

[Freestyler]

Also, teach them little bastards to stop bloody flaming each other every single second of the day! Teach them it's ok to let some comments slide, even if they are deliberately stupid or asinine attempts to troll them.

It's not a "real" conversation, so it's ok to not have to debate to "win" it. Internet conversations are throwaway at best, so teach them not to react to getting their feathers ruffled by some simpleton who's just being argumentative for the sake of being contrary. What I do is just stick my fingers up at the screen and blow raspberries instead of responding in text.

It's easier!

[psj3809]

Or those horrible "Forward this if you hate animal paedophilia" chain mails.

Arrrgh i hate those, if anyone forwards me those on facebook/email i block them. How stupid can people be, one friend wrote back to say 'well it cant hurt, only takes a second to forward it' (yeah and wind everyone up by it).

At one stage i used to get sent lots of these 'forward this onto your friends and get some lucky Irish charm (picture of a shamrock). Ridiculous !!

Dont know whats worse, those chain letters or begging Kickstarter emails every few minutes

[mohicankid]

posting personal details online, the amount of news stories you hear about teens bdays being crashed by hundreds, becouse they posted details on fb including their address and such like!

[r0jaws]

On Amibay we've had a couple of experiences of this sort of thing. Most recently one of our admins was being harassed by a troll who would not stop, used proxies and anonymised email to attack him, and created several duplicate accounts on the forum to stir up trouble.
Over a period of four years we employed every possible method to resolve the problem, negotiation and mediation proved pointless as the guy was obsessed, determined, resourceful and very immature. We tried to secure the forum as best we could without inconveniencing existing and future members, but there is a limit to what an open forum can do.
Finally, after collecting a substantial amount of evidence, we were able to report him to the police, who took it very seriously indeed. The police went to his house and cautioned him that further contact with the forum, and this admin in particular, would result in his computer equipment being seized and him being charged with harassment.
All contact with him abruptly stopped. One thing that people forget, is that what you write down, if it is linked to you, can be used as evidence for successful prosecution. Even anonymising your internet will only protect you so much.
If you want a few more details, fire me a PM and I'll see if I can get you some more information.