Are you afraid of ghosts? You should be if you post carelessly on social media. Consider this: You snap a funny shot of the school’s new soccer coach bending over. Your friends think it is hilarious. The next season, you try out for the team and discover that the coach isn’t excited about having you on the team.

She is concerned about your ability to show proper respect for the sport. You might be haunted by that old picture you posted the year before.

Or you go to a concert and post a comment about the fans dancing idiotically in front of the stage.

Months pass and you don’t think much about the posting… until you ask a bunch of kids at school what they’re doing that night. Someone says with a huff, “We’re going to go do some idiotic dancing,” before the group walk away from you.

Ah, yes, the ghost of social media past has come back to haunt you again.

You never know when a ghost will strike.

Some college applicants get haunted when colleges come across rude or even harassing behavior on line.

Others find out when applying for a job that an old insult scares them out of a great job.

Most commonly, these ghosts jump out at you when what you say online doesn’t match what happened in reality.

It doesn’t even have to be your social media that gets you into trouble.

You tell a friend that you can’t hang out with her because you are studying when later another friend posts a picture of you and her shopping at the mall.

Hurt feelings are bad enough, but people may stop trusting you. Ghosts can really jump out of nowhere. They can haunt friendships for years to come.

The only way to prevent your social media from haunting you is to be smart. When you want to share an activity or a thought, remember that others may share your post and that it could be seen by people in the future.

There are enough scary forces in the world. Don’t let your social media history come back to haunt you.

Have a safe and healthy Halloween this weekend, from all of us at Safe Search Kids!

Even though WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and Snapchat among others are the go-to social media platforms for instant communications, we still heavily rely on emails even in 2020. So why does there seem to be little focus on ways to protect our email privacy?

Afterall, we use emails to share our financial information with our accountants, manage online money transfer services like PayPal, and even use it to create all of our social media accounts. In a sense, our personal lives are linked to our email addresses.

Despite being such a major part of our life and the fact that 320 billion people are expected to be using it by 2021, email remains as one of the least secure means of communication. Believe it or not, email technology is still based on protocols that can’t cope up with modern online security threats.

Getting your email hacked might not seem like a big deal for kids, but for adults, it can be an absolute nightmare.

Keeping this in mind, in today’s informative blog post, I’m going to talk about why email privacy is so important, share with you some real-world email hacking case studies, and also tell you 9 proven tips to enhance your email privacy.

Why Email Privacy Matters?

Think about it for a second, everything you do online is connected to your email address. Whether it be online banking or something as simple as signing up for any online service, you’ll have to provide an email address to get started. Once you get registered, you usually get your account details such as username and password emailed back to you.

If a hacker gains access to your emails, all hell can break loose. According to VPNRanks, about 92% of malware is delivered through emails. That’s an alarming figure.

If a hacker gains access to your account, they can obtain sensitive information such as account credentials, personal information, and even steal your identity.

Now you must be thinking, how on earth can someone read my emails when no one knows my password?

Well, unlike the messages we send over WhatApp and other end-to-end encrypted messaging services, emails go through numerous servers before reaching their destination.

Whenever an email passes through an intermediary server, multiple copies of it are stored. While one server might be difficult to hack, others might not be. That’s how your emails get compromised.

Think I’m making this up?

Well, you can enter your email address on haveibeenpwned.com and check whether anyone has compromised your privacy.

Anyways, if you still have doubts, let’s check out some real-world use cases where people have actually lost a ton of money simply because their email addresses got hacked.

Real-World Email Hacking Cases

I’m going to share with you two actual cases that resulted in the loss of thousands of dollars simply because some hackers managed to gain access to the email accounts of unsuspected victims.

Case #1 – $47,500 Stolen From a Pensioner

A pensioner in Brisbane Australia bore a loss of $47,500 when he became a victim of an identity theft case. A hacker managed to hack into the victim’s account and send a series of convincing emails to the advisor managing his pension funds.

The hacker requested to deposit $90,000 to an overseas bank account as his daughter desperately needed money. The advisor got convinced and sent over a Pension Payment Request form telling the hacker that only $47,500 can be withdrawn.

The hacker filled in the form with all the details stolen from the client’s email account and told the adviser not to call him as he’s attending a funeral.

The advisor respected the client’s request thinking it was genuine and processed the withdrawal request right away. Till the real client could manage to explain that his email account got hacked a few days ago, the funds were already transferred to an offshore account.

Case #2 – Barely Dodged an Email Fraud of $260,000

Another financial adviser based in Australia was also targeted by a hacker, however, she managed to dodge a fraud of $260,000.

A hacker emailed her from her client’s email address that got hacked, requesting her to change the email address to a new one. The new email address only had one letter missing — “g”.

The hacker then sent an email from the new email account telling the advisor to deposit $260,000 in an offshore account because they wanted to buy some property. The email seemed totally legit, however, since the amount was quite substantial, the advisor wanted to talk to the client personally for authenticity reasons.

However, the real client was unreachable over the phone, and the transaction got delayed. In desperation, the hacker contacted the adviser via a phony contact number that was associated with the new bogus email address.

However, upon getting in contact, the adviser quickly figured out that the person on the phone was not the real customer judging from the accent, and refused to process the request.

9 Tips to Enhance Your Email Privacy

So by now, you must have an idea of how a hacker can take over your life if your email address gets compromised. But it’s not the end of the world. Now, we’re going to look at 9 proven easy tips to enhance the privacy of your email accounts.

Tip #1 – Use More Than One Email Address

You should never rely on just a single email account for work and personal use. Always use two different email accounts to segregate your work mailbox from your personal mailbox. This will ensure that you’re not putting all your eggs in the same basket.

If you want to take this strategy to another level, you can create different disposable email addresses when signing up for any service online. This way, you’ll never risk your personal information.

Tip #2 – Use Strong Passwords

Probably the most basic reason why most people lose their email accounts is that they use weak passwords. Passwords like your name followed by a sequence of numbers (John12345678) are really easy to crack.

With your password compromised, a hacker can freely go through your emails, piece your personal information together, and then wreak all sorts of havoc.

An easy solution to this problem is to use strong lengthy cryptic passwords. Use a lot of uppercase and lowercase letters along with numbers and special symbols to make your password uncrackable. A password like this: !.v[L2,m=nVhpPJ<:Ub<gQ5A, would be impossible to compromise.

Tip #3 – Don’t Share Your Email When You Don’t Have to

This seems pretty self-explanatory, however, you’re often going to find people linking their email addresses in their social media bios. We’re all guilty of it. Another mistake that we all make is that we tend to provide our real email address when signing up for services that don’t really require email confirmations.

By limiting where we share our email address, we can prevent hackers who are constantly on the lookout for new victims from compromising our email account’s privacy.

 Tip #4 – Enable Two-Factor authentication

In addition to using an insanely strong password, it’s often a good idea to use two-factor authentication (2FA). Two-factor authentication ensures that if your password gets compromised, an attacker will still be required to bypass the second layer of security.

Depending on which version of two-factor authentication your email client offers, an attacker will be required to either enter an email address on a secondary device, enter a pin received via SMS or answer a secret question for reinforced privacy.

Tip #5 – Never Email Personally-Identifying Information

Since emails are relatively easier to hack and compromise, you should never share any personally identifiable information such as social security numbers, phone numbers, date of birth, and other sensitive data. This will ensure that you’re not providing any information that can come back to haunt you in the future.

Tip #6 – Use a Secure and Authentic Email Client

If you want to be completely sure that no will be able to read the contents of your emails, you’ll have to ditch mainstream email clients like Gmail for something that’s not generic and actually offers any privacy.

You can go for something like ProtonMail, who have their servers buried 1,000 meters underground in a Swiss bunker. Other noteworthy email clients include Posteo, Mailfence, and mailbox.org.

Tip #7 – Sign Out of Your Mailbox as Often as You Can

This might seem like a cumbersome process, but it can actually enhance the privacy of your email account. Signing out whenever you’re not using your email account can prevent remote hijackers from examining the contents of your mailbox.

Now, I’m not suggesting that you log out of your account every time you’re done emailing someone. Instead, sign out of your email account at the end of your work shift or before going to bed. Especially if you’re using someone else’s computer.

Tip #8 – Don’t Use Public Wi-Fi

No matter how tempting a free Wi-Fi connection might seem, you should never use one for any sensitive task. Hackers are infamous for setting up malicious hotspots to intercept people’s personal information.

So, if you log into your email account via a malicious Wi-Fi connection, a hacker can potentially take over your email account and steal your sensitive information. This is why you should always use only trusted networks or use a Proxy if connecting to public Wi-Fi is the last option available to you.

Tip #9 – Use a Recovery Email Address

The last and final tip I have for you is to always set up a recovery email address in case something goes wrong. This way, if someone manages to take over your account and exploits you, then you can simply change your password via the recovery backup email address and regain control of your email account.

Wrapping up!

So this wraps it up. I hope you now have an idea of why you should start taking the privacy of your email accounts seriously. If you religiously start following the 9 tips I shared with you in this blog post, you can greatly enhance the privacy of your email account.

After all, it all comes down to you. You’re the only one who can put in the effort to and safeguard the privacy of your email account. If you found this blog post informative, do consider sharing it with your friends and family.

Growth is part of life, emotionally, physically, and academically. Education experts recommend regular measuring of students’ growth and success in the classroom as a way of helping teachers know if their students are growing at the right place and in the right direction. On the student’s part, having a growth mindset is critical to academic and lifelong success.

Besides providing your students with standardized testing after every semester or at the end of every school year, what else can you do as a teacher to aid your learners’ growth in and outside the classroom? That is the question that this article seeks to answer.

Measuring Student Growth

Student growth is when learners can increase their intelligence levels, discover and grow their talents, and learn new skills and abilities consistently. It also means instilling a growth mindset so that they start believing in their abilities, rather than doubting their chances of developing over time. You will know that your students are growing in the right way when they start showing signs of being thirsty for new information. They will also start seeking out opportunities to tackle challenges and grow their skills.

Here are 5 ways through which you can inspire growth in your students:

1. Create Communities

Communities can be within a classroom, across grades, or between students who share common interests, such as a sports lover community. Educators can foster a community that allows students to work together for a purpose bigger than their selfish interests. It gives kids a chance to belong and to have their voices heard. This will allow educators to monitor how students in the same community look after one another, how they appreciate the individual and collective effort, and how they create a conducive environment for sharing ideas. When that happens, the kids get smarter together and grow together and educators can know that they did a good job.

2. Instead of Praising Intelligence, Encourage Effort

Educators should encourage effort made and not the brilliance or intelligence of a student. Of course, some kids are born intelligent and will perform well in the classroom even when they behave badly and keep bad company. Praising them when they outscore everyone else can easily discourage their growth. Educators need to start complimenting students who outperform their previous attempts.

If a kid was struggling with a math concept last semester but has since improved, encourage them to keep pushing. That way, they will learn hard work and resilience, two important skills that will come in handy later in life. Also, remember not to dwell too much on past glory. Teach the learners to focus on their next step because that is the surest way of making progress.

3. Spend Purposeful Time Outside the Classroom

To ensure the physical and cognitive growth of your students, it is important that educators also insist on spending a purposeful time outside the classroom. This can be through fun outdoor activities, such as camping, hiking, going on biking expeditions, or learning how to put together a camping tent. All of these activities can stimulate teamwork, a needed recreational time, and also gives your students the sense that their growth and learning is not tied down to the classroom as a physical object.

4. Encourage Time Management and Organization

Teach your students about the importance of prioritizing tasks and managing time effectively. Kids are easily distracted by peer pressure, TV, among others, but that will not be the case if they have a timetable to follow. Help them to organize their school work, how to spare time for homework or work out, and how to revise their notes. These organizational and time management skills will help them grow into responsible adults and great corporate managers.

4. Inspirational Posters

Anchor charts around the classroom as reminders of the importance of authentic learning and the need for developing a growth mindset. The charts should feature images, words, and phrases that inspire the kids to grow. Think of quotes from successful business leaders, stories of popular athletes, and even former students who overcame the same challenges your students are going through now. Let the kids know that in spite of the initial failures and struggles that many successful people have had to go through, they still made it in life thanks to their growth mindset and determination for a bigger change.

5. Encourage Curiosity

Being curious about something is what drives learners to find clarity and urgency in different aspects of life. Without it, it can never be created. It is through encouraging kids to ask you thought-provoking questions and allowing them to experiment on different hypotheses that they will get the motivation and purpose for designing something. A study suggests that students maintaining their curiosity is how they truly immerse themselves in their studies, and that’s how growth happens.

You can encourage curiosity in the simplest ways possible. For instance, you can introduce the concept of seed germination and growth through a small indoor garnered project. Planting the seeds, taking care of them, and anticipating the moment they bloom can greatly encourage their curiosity. If your classroom doesn’t get enough sunlight, you can ask your school to invest in some grow lights, that will not only compensate for the lack of natural light but will also speed up the entire process. This can make the curiosity-filled learning effective and time-efficient.

Conclusion: Aiding Student Growth

There are tons of inherent benefits of developing a growth mindset, both for kids and adults. As a teacher, you will only succeed in aiding your learners to grow by encouraging them to push through their comfort zones to grasp new concepts regardless of how tough they could be. You will need to be patient with them because growth doesn’t happen instantaneously.

Google is helping kids to be Internet Awesome! Through fun interactive Google games, kids can learn how to be better digital citizens by learning important lessons about online safety. Access to this amazing world can happen at home or in school. These Google games take kids on a journey to “play their way” to being awesome people on the internet.

We all need to be prepared to make smart decisions while online. It doesn’t just happen. It takes education on how to safely explore the world.

The Google Be Internet Awesome program makes learning fun while playing. Simple common sense lessons are learned, such as how to focus on positive online activity, instead of negative comments and hurtful attitudes.

Deciding not to engage or contribute to the hate that divides us is a choice. The milti-level Google game teaches kids what to do instead and where to safely do it. Kids can start their exciting journey now to Be Internet Awesome.

Apart from kids playing the actual game itself, Google has provided helpful resources for adults to join in the adventure to re-enforce what is being learned online. These include downloadable guides for families and printable classroom activities for teachers. We’ve provided a link to these Google resources at near the end of this article.

Learn the Internet Code of Awesome

Here are the five educational focal points kids will learn throughout their online quest to be internet smart, alert, strong, kind and brave.

How to be Internet Smart

It starts with learning how to ‘share with care’. Toys in the offline world are shared with friends we trust. So why be careless about sharing our personal information and pictures on the internet? These can easily end up in possession of those we don’t know if we are not careful.

Be Internet Alert

Don’t ‘fall for fake’ by becoming aware that things online are not always as they appear. Information needs to be ‘fact checked’ from reliable sources. Social media is a powerful resource to connect us with others, but can just as easily be used to spread incorrect information.

Be Internet Strong

Are your secrets secure? Exactly what personal information is at risk with anyone that is interacting online? It’s an important lesson in protecting personal privacy. Knowledge in safe practices translates in the power to protect oneself. This is just as important for kids as it is for adults.

Be Internet Kind

Google games helps kids learn responsibility online while instilling a valuable belief that it’s ‘cool to be kind’. It not only benefits others and makes them feel good, positive benefits come back to make our own lives better as well. Collectively, kindess makes whole world a better place.

Be Internet Brave

Talking to someone we trust can often be the most brave thing of all when facing a difficult situation online. It may be cyberbullying or a simple problem of how to react to something a child comes across online. We operate in a digital world but the most valuable conversations happen in person, whether at home or at school.

Google Internet Awesome Resources

The Google iterative game consisting of four levels of learning take place with Interland. Kids will learn digital safety while having fun.

Educators can download the Be Internet Awesome Curriculum. This includes lesson plans and the ISTE Seal of Alignment and activities that reinforce what kids are learning through the Google game.

Parents can download the Be Internet Awesome Pledge. This will begin a conversation about online safety. Playing the game online while interacting with parents and siblings offline can open the door to discussion and questions being answered.

Get access now to these resources and learn how Google is helping kids to be safe internet explorers of the online world. Share this resource using one of options below.