Posts Tagged ‘child identity theft’

Being the Change … from the Mouths of Babes

Posted: May 23, 2015 by IntentionalPrivacy in Security or Privacy Initiatives, Tips
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Let me tell you about children who are leading changes in a wide variety of areas including education, research on cancer and asthma, and even information security and privacy. It was eye-opening to me because many people—including me!—discount discoveries made by children because they are “too young” to add significant information to a dialog. What they could add—if we give them a chance—is a fresh perspective.

I recently had the opportunity to attend an information security keynote presentation given by Reuben Paul. I attend many security events every year, so that might not seem so unusual, except that this amazing young man is only nine years old. He gave his first information security presentation Infosec from the Mouth of Babes at the 2014 DerbyCon conference in Kentucky at the age of eight, and he has given many presentations since then. Here is his story. His father, Mano Paul, is an information security trainer and consultant.

Reuben’s talk at DerbyCon discussed three topics:

  1. Why should you teach kids about Information Security?
  2. How can you teach kids about Information Security?
  3. What can kids teach you about Information Security?

Reuben’s advice at DerbyCon? “[Parents and educators should] teach … kids to use [technology] safely and securely.”

Many grownups do not have the level of understanding of privacy and security that Reuben does. How did Reuben gain that understanding? Reuben credits his parents and his school for being supportive, but some credit belongs to Reuben. He imagined how children could participate in information security and privacy, and insisted on being heard. That takes, well, imagination as well as persistence.

Then I started looking at other amazing children. I found a section on TED Talks called “TED under 20.”

One of the first videos I saw was called Science is for everyone, kids included. The video tells the story of neuroscientist Beau Lotto working with a class of 25 eight- to ten-year-old children from Blackawton Primary School, Blackawton, Devon, UK. The children developed an experiment on training bees to choose flowers according to rules. Then the children wrote and submitted a paper, which was published by the Royal Society Biology Letters.

The paper is free to download and fun to read!

The conclusion the Blackawton Primary School children came to was that “Play enables humans (and other mammals) to discover (and create) relationships and patterns. When one adds rules to play, a game is created. This is science: the process of playing with rules that enables one to reveal previously unseen patterns of relationships that extend our collective understanding of nature and human nature.”

Jo Lunt, science teacher at Blackawton Primary School, said, “I think one of the biggest changes I’ve seen is the children’s approach to learning science. They don’t get so hung up or worried about getting the answer right. They think more about the journey they’re on and the learning they’re doing along the way.”

How I harnessed the wind, is the story of William Kamkwamba. Malawi, the country where he lived, experienced a drought in 2001. He and his family not only couldn’t pay for his schooling, they were all starving because their crops failed. He was determined to help his family find a solution for the drought. He found a book in the library with plans for a windmill. At the age of 14, he built his first windmill from scrap yard materials to pump water for crop irrigation and to create electricity.

Award-winning teenage science in action explains the projects of the three teenage girls who won the 2011 Google Science Fair. Lauren Hodge, age 13-14 category, conducted her research on how carcinogens formed while grilling chicken. Shree Bose’s project, the age 17-18 age category and grand prize winner, concentrated on reasons why cancer survivors developed resistance to chemotherapy. Naomi Shah, age 15-16 category, used a complex mathematical model to look at ways to improve air quality for asthmatics.

Children learn very rapidly, and since they have used technology all their lives, they will often master new skills with an ease that will take your breath away. Be the change, mentor change, and be willing to change. Be open to learning from anyone who can teach you!

Happy Data Privacy Day!

Posted: January 28, 2015 by IntentionalPrivacy in First Steps, free speech, Security or Privacy Initiatives
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Data-Privacy-Day-2015roundInternational Data Privacy Day—called Data Protection Day in Europe—is celebrated in the US, Canada, and 27 European countries every year on January 28. It started on January 28, 1981, when the members of the Council of Europe signed the Convention for Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data. In the US, Data Privacy Day is sponsored by StaySafeOnline.

Ever thought, why should I protect my information? Listen to Glenn Greenwald’s Ted Talk on Why Privacy Matters. Not only will it help you understand, but it might galvanize you to action!

Some tips on how to better protect your data include:

  • Use “Do Not Track” on your browser. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) explains how to turn on “Do Not Track” in some common browsers here. The EFF is a great resource about how to better protect your personal information.
  • Think before you share personal information, whether through email, on social media sites, or over the phone. Once you share information, you have no control over what happens to it. Help your children learn what is okay for them to share.
  • Check the privacy settings on social media sites you use on a regular basis. Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, … privacy policies change, which may impact your privacy settings.
  • Protect your computer by keeping your operating system and applications updated. On Windows, Secunia’s Personal Software Inspector helps me keep my applications current.
  • Create strong, unique passwords for every important site. Have a problem remembering all those passwords? Me too! Use a password manager like KeePass or LastPass. If you want to protect your information more, use two-factor authentication for email and social media site log-ins.
    • Help setting up Google’s Two-Factor Authentication
    • Help setting up Microsoft’s Two-Factor Authentication
  • Back up your important data regularly—pictures, documents, music, videos, or whatever is important to you—at least once a week. If you use a physical device, disconnect it between backups. To ensure that your information is safe, use two physical backup devices, alternate them, and keep one someplace safe like a safe deposit box. If you use a cloud backup, use a physical back up as well. Online services can go offline temporarily or even go out of business, while devices break, become corrupted, lost, stolen, or infected by malware. Periodically try to recover documents to ensure that your backups are functional.

Other tips

  • Mozilla’s Get Smart on Privacy
  • FTC’s Consumer Information
  • Check out DuckDuckGo, a search engine that doesn’t track you. Want to see how much tracking happens in your browser? Check out the Firefox Lightbeam addin.
  • Try WhiteHat Security Lab’s Aviator browser. Note: if you use two-factor authentication, you will need to enter a code every time you open up a site that uses it.

Child Identity Theft

Posted: June 21, 2013 by IntentionalPrivacy in First Steps, Identity theft
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Do you check your child’s credit reports?

It’s really important that you check your child’s credit report while he or she is a child because a child whose identity is stolen can have problems finding a job, getting credit, or renting a place to live after they become an adult. The older the records, the more difficult they are to clean up. How can someone get credit in the name of a juvenile? Credit reporting agencies do not have a foolproof way to check age when financial information is posted, so it is difficult for them to know that the victim is a child.

And what if your school has a data breach? Yes, that happens. You can check different types of breaches that have been made public at http://www.privacyrights.org/data-breach

Also think about what information you allow to be public about your children … on Facebook, at schools or school events, through Twitter.

For more information about protecting your child’s identity, consult the Identity Theft Resource Center article on “Identity Theft and Children.” http://www.idtheftcenter.org/artman2/publish/v_fact_sheets/Fact_Sheet_120.shtml The FTC also has a very good article on child identity theft at http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0040-child-identity-theft