5 Ways Your Kids Can Be Located By Predators

5 Ways Your Kids Can Be Located By Predators. Online predators are everywhere. Your kids may be inadvertently exposing themselves to dangers online. If an online predator can find where your child lives or hangs out, they may try to meet them in person or stalk them. It’s a scary world out there and due to the internet, that world has gotten even smaller. Danger lurks at every corner. The internet can be an important tool for kids to use. Just make sure that when they are using it, they aren’t giving away their location as well. Here are five ways that your child may be giving away their location without even knowing it.

They Don’t Turn Geotagging Off On Their Phones

Many people don’t even realize that their phone is tagging their pictures and files with GPS location. Did you know that if you have a photo of something that you took with your phone and you place it online, depending on the information geotagged to that photo, someone may be able to get your exact location? It’s true. Make sure that your kids phone has the geotagging function turned off.

Adding Location To Their Social Media Status

Some social media sites like Twitter and Facebook may automatically add your location to your status updates. My Twitter app on my smart phone was doing this for some time before I noticed that I needed to change a setting. Luckily it only released the city I was in and not my exact location. Be sure to check your kids social media settings before they start posting.

Leaving GPS Enabled On Their Cell Phones

As your kids download more and more apps for their iphone, they may be allowing those apps to have access to their GPS as well as personal data stored on the phone. Make sure that they aren’t allowing apps to pull their location via GPS.

Updating Social Media With What They Are Doing

Teaching your kids not to share every little detail of their lives on the internet is important. Sometimes people inadvertently give out details about where they are and don’t even realize it. They could innocently update their status with “I’m at the mall”. What an online predator may see is that your child is going to the mall. They look at your childs profile and it gives the city and state that they live in. Now they have narrowed down what mall your child could be at. Since they have your childs picture from social media, it won’t be hard to find them.

Sharing Personal Information On Chat Rooms And Forums

People think because they use a fake name in chat rooms that they are protected. Unfortunately that’s not always true. Online predators have ways of using the information that they have shared on there and pairing it with IP addresses and even pictures that are geotagged and can come up with where your child may live. Monitor all of their online interactions, not just social media.

There are so many dangers online as it is, as a parent you need to make sure that your child isn’t giving anyone a chance to take advantage of them.

About Author

Janet Lee is a Information Technology director for a school district. She contributes her knowledge of online dangers to many sites including Phone Sheriff, a parental control app to make sure that your kids are staying safe online.

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