Look after your family’s privacy online

When you post something online, you can never be truly sure that it won't be shared or seen outside of your small corner of the internet. Sharing facts about your teen’s private life online (like where they go to school or their full name) may put their safety and wellbeing at risk. We’ve pulled together some top digital privacy tips, so you can keep your whole family safe online.

Top tips for keeping personal information safe online

• Keep private info about your family offline. Avoid publicly sharing pictures of your children in school uniform or with other identifiable information (such as their full name and date of birth).

• Respect your teen’s right to privacy. If your teen shares something with you in confidence, don’t post it online. Especially if they’re already embarrassed by the situation.

• Teach your teen about what is and isn’t okay to share. Have a conversation with your child about what they should share with friends only (e.g. location and age), publicly (e.g. name and general interests) and what information should be kept off social media completely (e.g. full date of birth and full home address).

• Talk to your child about why identity is important. Give them examples of how their information could be used against them. For example, discuss how a bank uses name, D.O.B and home address to verify account holders over the phone.

• Don't over-emphasise the bad or scary stuff. Social media and the digital world can also be a very helpful way of keeping track of your own information and interacting with the world. Try to give them knowledge and information to be responsible without scaring them away from being open with you about their online behaviour.

• Take the year out of your birthday. It's fine to keep your birthday in your online profile, but having your full D.O.B can be a risk. Try keeping the day and month, but change the year to something different (e.g. 5th of November 1904).

• Update your password every 6 - 8 weeks. There are a few things you can do to follow password best practice:

  • Include numbers, capital letters and symbols (%, $, !)

  • Use a different password for different platforms

  • Don’t write them down in one place, unless it’s secure

  • Don’t use a child or pet’s name, or something obvious like ‘password’.

Managing privacy settings on each platform

Every time you or your teenager signs up to a new social media platform, you’re also sharing your personal information with that platform. Staying on top of privacy settings can be hard to manage at times, but it's crucial for protecting your family’s online privacy. 

Each platform has its own policies and settings, which can change frequently, so be sure to stay up-to-date and regularly adjust the settings for both you and your teen. Here are some tips on navigating the privacy settings for some of the most popular social media platforms:

Instagram

• Learn how to make your Instagram profile private so that only people you approve will be able to see what you post. 

• If you select ‘Include image location’ when posting, your followers can see where you posted the image from. You can turn this function off by disabling location access for Instagram in your phone’s settings.

• Keep your details to a minimum if you have a public account. The only information you must provide publicly is your username.

• Find out more about Instagram’s privacy settings.

TikTok

• Learn how to make your TikTok profile private, so that only people you approve will be able to see what you post.

• Do not include personal information in your profile, as TikTok profile information is visible to all users even if you have a private account.

• Turn on Restricted Mode to limit the appearance of content that may not be appropriate for all audiences.

• Find out more about TikTok’s privacy settings.

Snapchat

• Keep up to date with settings through the Snapchat support centre.

• Limit the audience who sees your snaps and who can send you snaps.

• Block users or report inappropriate content. There’s a misconception that Snapchat is used only to send inappropriate and illegal content. This platform is easily moderated by reporting content that doesn’t fit the Snapchat community guidelines.

• Find out more about Snapchat’s privacy settings.

YouTube

• Get tips on how to protect your identity on YouTube.

• Set your videos to be public, private or unlisted by changing your video privacy settings.

• Manage YouTube comments by having them paused or turned off entirely. 

• Secure your account through 2-Step Verification.

Discord

• Check out Discord’s blocking and privacy settings to learn how to control the messages you receive, stop people from contacting you, and adjust ‘friend request’ settings.

• Read Discord’s four steps to a safer account to learn safe account practices.

• Visit Discord’s Parent Hub to learn more about helping your teen stay safer on the platform

• Find out more on Discord’s Privacy Hub.

Twitch

• Read up on Twitch’s Privacy Choices to learn how to control who sees your content and personal information.

• Get up to speed with Twitch’s tips on how to protect your account.

WhatsApp

• Learn how to change WhatsApp privacy settings to control who can see your photo, status updates, about information and location.

• Follow these WhatsApp security tips to better secure your account.

• Get up to date with how WhatsApp’s security features work.

• Learn more about how end-to-end encryption works.

Facebook

• Stay up to date with changes to Facebook’s privacy settings by browsing the Facebook Help Centre.

• Explore Facebook’s privacy and safety tools.

• Set posts to send to ‘friends only’ as the default. 

• Set your image settings so that any tagged pictures or posts need to be approved first.

• Make sure all your profile information (like email addresses and phone numbers) is set to ‘only me’.

• Use the Facebook ‘privacy checkup’ tool to assess how you can improve your privacy on your account.