Safe On Social Media

Hopefully, our community is aware that during Term 2 all staff participated in training around the use of social media; that all students from Year 4 to Academy II participated in learning sessions and that we hosted an information evening for our parents and community. Since these events we have established an ongoing relationship with Kirra Pendergast at Safe On Social Media and we will now regularly place information and alerts in our newsletter around safe social media use. As always if you have any questions please contact the school.

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All of these VPN apps are identified by Safe on Social Media as being unsafe for children to use. VPN apps are used to access information through a proxy server and bypass firewalls or parental controls. If your child has a VPN installed, we highly suggest removing it from the device.

Mobile Zone

Install the Mobile Zone App on your child’s iOS and Android smart devices to extend the Family Zone outside of home. The App includes a simple interface for your kids to interact with the Family Zone plus it embeds technology to allow you to remotely manage the device and impose internet filters. Supports iOS versions (iOS 8 or later) and Android versions (4.0.3 and up).

The Mobile Zone App is designed for your kids devices. It is not for parents and does not have parental features. To manage your family's settings you need to access the Family Zone Web Portal.

Rating: Recommended

SQA My Study Plan

SQA’s My Study Plan is an app that will automatically create your own personalised study plan based on your exam times, their importance and when you want to study. It allows users to added subjects and exam dates, set priorities and set study times. The app is ideal for learners of all ages from school pupils and college students to adult learners.

Features: Educational Information

Rating: Recommended

2048

2048 is a math-based puzzle game. It encourages math skills, but is also accessible to younger players, who just have to match like numbers. The game also promotes strategic planning to maximize playtime before you're out of moves. Parents should be aware that the app includes to links social media and the App Store. There are several 2048 clones flooding the app stores now, so parents should be aware that developers of some of these may not make them as family friendly as the one we tested.

Features: Gaming, Educational Information

Risks: Screen Time

Rating: Recommended

Pokémon: Magikarp Jump

Pokemon Magikarp jump is a game about the weakest pokemon Magikarp. To win the game you have to train your Majikarp to jump the highest and win the jumping league. There are in-app purchases, however they are not needed to complete the game.

Features: Gaming

Risks: Screen Time, In-app Purchases

Rating: Recommended

Fidget Spinner

Fidget Spinner is a very simple game with pretty concrete goals: Swipe your screen to spin, spin to earn coins, spend coins to upgrade your spinner or change it cosmetically. It is full of ads, in-app purchases and heavily pushes information sharing.

Features: Gaming

Risks: Screen Time, In-app Purchases, Personal Information Sharing, Digital Footprint

Rating: Be careful up to 8 years

WeChat

China's most popular messaging apps, WeChat allows users to send text messages, photos, videos, audio messages and make phone calls to and from contacts in your address book. Group chats between friends are also commonplace. The risks associated with this app are similar to those in the messenger category. The app also contains a 'People Nearby' geolocation feature to talk to users in close proximity. The sharing of inappropriate content or conversations is at the discretion of the user, so some teens will use this app for innocently chatting with friends, while others may use this app for the purpose of sexting or cyber bullying. With ongoing supervision and use of the app in central family locations (ie. not in bedrooms), this app may be used by teens.

Features: Video & Photo Sharing; Private Messaging, Geolocation

Risks: Bullying, Offensive Language, Screen Time, Digital footprint, Sexual Content, Sexual Predators, Location Tracking, Personal Information Sharing

Rating: Unsafe up to 16 years

Wish - Shopping Made Fun

Wish is a shopping app with a large selections of products from world wide outlets. Upon joining this app they give a free gift worth up to $30 and users just pay for shipping. Like all shopping apps they require either credit cards or a PayPal account to make purchases. The app doesn't have any parental controls or controls on adult merchandise. There is no need for children under the age of 16 to be using this app unsupervised.

Risks: Personal Information Sharing, Adult Content, In-app Purchases

Rating: Unsafe to up 16 years

Instagram's new live stream feature. What are the risks? and what to do.

Instagram has introduced a “live stories” feature. So now, as well as photos and videos, users can send friends direct messages that disappear. Instagram users can now swipe right on the app to access the Instagram Stories camera as per usual, however there is now an option for "LIVE" under the same options for "NORMAL" and "BOOMERANG".

Once a user goes live with the new function, followers will be notified, so they can tune in. Their story icon will also say "Live" under it when friends are scrolling through their Instagram Stories. The user can see how many people have tuned in by checking the number on the top right of the screen.

Another feature of this update is the ability to send images and videos in direct messages that will disappear after the user has viewed them, just like Snapchat. Users can send direct messages with disappearing content both to individual users and within group chats on Instagram.

They are able to initiate Instagram Direct after filming and they will have a series of options as to whether they want to send it to an individual or to a group. Similar to Snapchat, they disappear after the fact; the user will receive a notification if their friends screenshot or replay it.

Unless the user has chosen to turn off commenting for their Stories, you will be able to comment, and people will be able to comment on yours as well.

In addition to going live on their own Instagram, users can check in on what other people are streaming by checking the Explore page and tapping “Top Live”. There they will be able to see what the most popular live Instagram Stories currently streaming are. This is where the big risk lies. There is no filtering here and pornographic, violent and other inappropriate content is able to been seen by children very easily.

This new feature brings more new threats to young users. Cases of young people demonstrating uncharacteristic violence or live-streaming nudity have made headlines. Things a young person might discover among a number of live streams could range from suicides to real-time sexual assaults.

The danger comes from irresponsible users who are fine with exploiting kids’ innocence. Young people, given the opportunity to gain instant fame, more likes, and a wider audience (any live stream can be viewed by thousands and potentially millions of people), can be lured into participating in activities that have undesirable consequences.

Instagram has an age restriction of 13+

What to do?

Talk to young people and explain that Instagram, like any other social network, is not a place to share private information, or anything else they would not talk about or show in public or in front of a stranger.
Explain the danger of people who use their online anonymity to deceive others.
Help young people to learn to use reporting tools. Or if reporting to the app doesn’t work use www.esafety.gov.au or if the threat is serious contact your local police immediately.
Disable location services for Instagram immediately.
Please do not hesitate to get in touch with any questions – kirra@safeonsocial.com

Snap Map

Late last week and over the weekend, you may have heard about the latest feature being touted by Snapchat…..Snap Map.

Snap Map lets a user share their real-time location, their friends can view on an interactive map not only which street they are on, but exactly where they are on that street too.

Since a large number of Snapchat’s users are teenagers, this feature is very scary when you consider their personal safety. Here at Safe on Social Media we are extremely concerned about Snap Map’s privacy issues, and believe it could expose users to potential predators, bullying etc.

Once a user updates to the latest version of the app, all they need to do to launch Snap Map is pinch the Snapchat camera home screen. From there, they can choose to share their location with all of their friends, select some of them, or choose none of them by using ‘Ghost Mode’, which hides them from the map but still allows them to track their friends.

We urge parents and guardians to make sure young people select Ghost Mode, and not the other two options.

The new update means users are constantly sharing their location with their Snapchat friends, as long as they have the app open or are actively using it.

A users location is not public to people who are not their friends on Snapchat so we hope this triggers users to cull on their Snapchat friends list as most teenagers in particular are connected to a number of people that they don’t know.

Given the widespread use in high schools of the app “Yellow” which enables users to connect with strangers from all over the world through their Snapchat, Instagram or Facebook accounts.

Please remind young people that stranger danger does not go away anymore and when they are connecting to people online that they don’t know this is a major threat to personal safety and privacy

24 x 7.

Everything you post on social media impacts your personal brand. How do you want to be known?

The Publicity Gal