“Smartphones are distracting and potentially dangerous for children yet are widespread in elementary and middle school because of unrealistic social pressure and expectations to have one.”
“Parents feel powerless in this uphill battle and need community support to help delay the ever-evolving presence of the smartphone in the classroom, social arena and family dinner table. Let’s band together to wait until at least eighth grade before children are allowed to have a smartphone. “
https://www.waituntil8th.org/why-wait – top Silicon Valley execs are delaying the smartphone for THEIR children until at least age 14. Click the link to learn more.
https://www.waituntil8th.org/faqs – the FAQ that explains what the pledge is, how to rally people from the school into participating, and even has downloadable signup sheets and posters.
https://www.waituntil8th.org/devices – “When you are considering what communication device is best for your child, it is important first to ask what is the purpose of the device? In other words, why does my child need a phone? If calling and texting is all that is needed, we encourage parents to consider a basic phone before a smartphone.”
While you can find a TON of articles explaining how to stay safe online, many are either too wordy, take too long to get to the point, or are annoying in other ways.
Yes, there are a LOT of them, and they are constant [especially if you use a lot of software]. But update anyway – MDS Tech suggests starting updates before you go to sleep, so you are not aware of how long it takes.
Seriously – update. You’ll save headaches!
Turn on MFA/2FA – i.e. that thing where you get a text with a code when trying to login to an account.
Turn that on where you can – no, it is not perfect, but it is a bit like adding another lock on the door so the “bad guys” can’t get in.
This way you can have all of your passwords stored in one [VERY secure] place…. but make sure you have that one password stashed somewhere safe. There are lots of options out there.
Your computer WILL die [just like your car or refrigerator]. It is inevitable [see Murphy’s Law] that it will happen at the worst possible time. SO make sure you have backups of your data.
The hard part is figuring out how – and that is well beyond the scope of this article. Do a web search – something like ‘how backup [your operating system]”. For example – “how backup mac”.
This is some advice that has changed over the years. Using three random words is FAR more secure than using just a few letters or numbers, and MUCH harder to guess. Some examples of decent passwords:
threerandomvehicles
FredGeorgeLIzrds [note the deliberate misspelling!]
IhaveNOidea!
Some website will require numbers, special characters like a period or an exclamation point, etc. The common theme here is to mix up type [upper case, lower case, number, characters] and make it as long as practical. 12 characters is far more secure than 8. 24 characters might be too aggravating to type in!
Thanks to Britain’s Nation Cyber Security Centre for posting the article serving as the source for this posting.
In Part 1, we looked at how to THINK before you start searching. Remember that the goal is to find what you seek in ONE search.
Here are some other ways you can “make Google Dance” as you search the web. MOST of these tips will also work for DuckDuckGo.com, and possibly the other search engines as well.
Note that much of this material is drawn from an article from macsales.com
Site-Specific searching.
If you’d like to search a specific website [macon, com, for example], then add “site:domain_mane” to the end of your search.
should find every mention of the school at the macon.com website.
Getting rid of some results
Let’s say you are researching “fording a river”, but you keep getting results for Ford vehicles. You can use the minus sign to remove articles about the cars, which would make it easier to find what you seek;
Sometime the search engine gives you results that DON’T contain your search terms, or the results contain SOME of them. You can force the results to contain the terms by using the plus sign.
Use the asterisk to represent ANYTHING. That is useful if you aren’t quite sure of what you are looking for, or if you’d like to know what info is available about something general.
If you are looking for info relating to a particular computer, or car, for a specific year, the “after:” and “before:” options will save you some time.
So if you are loking for info about teh Ford Mustand, but only the models from teh late 1960’s, you would search this:
No, these aren’t words that will get you into trouble. They refer to ways to require ALL of your search terms or ANY of them in your search results, by using the words “AND” and “OR”. They can be used with ANY of the above options.
So if I want to search for a Ryobi one+ air compressor, but limited to Homedepot, Lowes, and Ace Hardware:
If you are having trouble finding, and have learned to THINK about your search, then dive into advanced search. At the top-right corner, click Settings, then Advanced Search. There are a lot of options here, but most are easy to figure out.
FINAL ADVICE:
DO NOT GIVE UP. There are a gazillion ways to find what you seek on the Web.
THINK about what you are looking for. Be as specific as possible.
Contact Tech, or visit the ARC, to get more advice [but ONLY after you have tried these tips and are just absolutely out of ideas.]
