Over the past few weeks, Safe Surfer has performed research on Google’s latest YouTube feature: YouTube Shorts. We are disturbed by what we found, how easy it is to access, and how the algorithm works in presenting content to users who look at inappropriate videos. Warning: this article is intended for parents and discusses mature topics. Having been released to the public in July 2021, YouTube Shorts is a TikTok-style competitor in the looping video (or “reels”) market.

A well-known inconvenience in the IT world is how the term “phishing” is pronounced the same way as “fishing”. This sometimes creates confusion—just like a real phishing attack! The Safe Surfer team has detailed several suggestions below that can help protect you from cybercriminals. Hover first, click later Attackers sometimes abuse hyperlinks (that is, highlighted web links on websites and emails) to make it appear that you’re going to a friendly site, when you’re really being led to a spoof site—a fake.