UAE: Teach children to protect themselves from online threats, parents warned

UAE: Teach children to protect themselves from online threats, parents warned

Many parents are unaware of the apps children have installed on their phones, authorities say

Image used for illustrative purposes only.

Published: Mon 25 Apr 2022, 5:54 PM

With the current increase in the use of the Internet among everyone, including children, online predators seem be increasingly targeting youngsters through social media. These cyber criminals bully, blackmail, sexually harass, and threaten children.

Officers at Abu Dhabi Police have reiterated the need for parents to take good care of children, including protecting them from dangers of cybercriminals because the youngsters spend a lot of time online.

During a lecture titled: “Protecting our children...a social responsibility”, which was part of police’s Ramadan councils, Major Ghaida Ali Abdullah from the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) stressed the importance of protecting children in the virtual world from the dangers of fraudsters and scammers via the Internet. “This should be done through teaching the children how to protect themselves while online, the Dos and Don’ts, safeguarding their online accounts from hacking, setting a different secret code for each account, and not downloading any files without scanning them from viruses,” he said.

Capt. Yaqoub Yousef Al Hammadi, also from CID, spoke about methods of protecting children from the dangers of the Internet, including