What's A Geo-Tag And Why Do I Need to Know???

October is Internet safety month, and Granby has been busy working to inform our youth and their families about this important topic. Earlier this month all youth in grades 5 through 10 had the opportunity to see grade appropriate presentations on this subject during school assemblies, and parents were invited to attend a two-hour evening presentation.

Presenter Scott Driscoll of Internet Safety Concepts did a fantastic job of providing the factual information we all need in order to use the world wide web as a safe resource. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. If you missed the presentation,here are just of few of the surprising pieces of information Scott shared with us.

• Geo-tagging: Many of us were startled to learn that when we or our children take pictures on a GPS-enabled smart phone and upload them to sites like the incredibly popular Instagram, anyone viewing those pictures can find the exact location where the picture was taken with just a few clicks of the mouse. WOW! 

The way it works is that when a picture is taken with a GPS-enabled smart phone, the GPS coordinates are embedded in the photo data. While some sites like Facebook wipe that location data before posting the picture, many more (such as Instagram)do not. So what do we do? If you are going to use a smart phone to snap a pic and post it, TURN OFF THE GPS FUNCTION before you shoot the picture.

• Who is at risk from on-line predators: Well, anyone who goes online is potentially at risk, but the  demographic group most commonly targeted are young boys between the ages of 12 and 20.

• Peer-to-peer music sharing sites: The first most obvious problem with these sites is that it is illegal to share music like this. The other issue which surprised many of us at the presentation is the risk using this software poses to your computer and to your identity. Bear Share and other peer to peer software is often loaded with spy-ware and viruses.

Because we allow the software to be downloaded, it bypasses most of our security, leading to our computers slowing down and eventually crashing. Even worse, some of the spy-ware includes key stroke logging software. Once this is downloaded, every keystroke made on your computer is tracked and copied to a word document, which is then uploaded to someone you do not know. They filter through the gibberish to mine for data like passwords and account numbers...Yikes!

• The world of gaming: Back in the day, playing Pong with a friend meant you were sitting in the same room sharing a controller.  Not anymore.  Most of us use gaming systems that allow us to play with people from all over the world. For many families, this is an issue because while we may not let our children join a social networking site like Facebook, we do let them play games on line. We need to keep the focus on Internet safety even while gaming.  I hope these highlights were helpful. We hope to be bringing Scott Driscoll back to Granby in the Fall of 2014.  Be sure to check him out!