Hot off the heels of our in-depth report on YouTube Shorts, Safe Surfer has discovered that the comments feature for YouTube videos is being abused by spam accounts to spread pornographic content. Companies, in the marketing of their upcoming movies and television series, frequently post trailers to promote new content—an example of this could be Disney. To grow its customer base, the company posts promotional trailers to YouTube for new Disney+ streaming content from key franchises such as Marvel and Star Wars.

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.

There are so many practical things we as parents can do to raise safe, wise and kind digital users. Filtering and monitor software is a must. Clear rules and boundaries are vital. But the one thing I believe bears the most long-term fruit is the building of a healthy digital culture in our homes: an established and consistent way of seeing and doing things which becomes part of the fabric of our character and family.

Introducing screens often begins with simple and innocent thinking like how awesome a tablet will be for helping your young person learn to read, or write or math or research, or perhaps it’s a cell phone for safety and connectivity. And not too soon after your kiddos have got their very own device for ‘learning’ or comms with you, they’re asking to download a game they heard their friend talking about, and then next week it’s another.