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29 March 2024

Beware when your child is online: 3 out of 10 UAE families lose money or data

Published
By Staff

New research has revealed that 3 out of 10 (29 per cent) of users in the UAE have lost either money or important information as a result of their children’s online activity.

This number suggests that, in addition to the risk of children encountering cyber threats, they can also cause inadvertent problems for their parents.

The joint research by Kaspersky Lab and B2B International, is not surprising considering that an equal number of respondents in the UAE (28 per cent) believe their children know little about computer technology and 28 per cent believe their kids know nothing of cyber threats.

That same lack of awareness poses risks for parents who allow their children to use their online devices. Less than a fifth (17 per cent) of respondents said their children had accidentally deleted important information, while 10 per cent faced unexpected bills from app stores after the youngsters got online.

All in all, every fifth polled parent confessed they had had an experience of losing money or important data because of their children’s actions.

Despite this, only a third of parents in the UAE are really alert to the danger: just 34 per cent are concerned that their children may spend money online without parental consent, and only 27 per cent are worried that their kids share confidential information too freely online.

At the same time, the parents use various methods to avoid problems and protect their children from online threats. For example, 29 per cent personally control how their children use devices, and 13 per cent asked their Internet provider to block access to certain sites.

In addition 27 per cent of parents in the UAE regularly remind their children about the dangers of the Internet, while 14 per cent opted to befriend their children on social networks. It is significant that only 23 per cent of parents use specialised software to regulate their children’s activities online, although this is a convenient feature available in many security solutions.

“When parents think of their children spending time online, their first concern is to protect them from unwanted content on the web. However, there is another important aspect that should not be forgotten, and that is the problems kids may cause for their parents.

“Applying parental control is not showing distrust to your child; it’s a sensible precaution with which you can, among other things, protect your device and the data on it. Interestingly, it also works the other way round: adult children might use these kind of software products to help older parents who know little about cyber threats,” said Konstantin Ignatev, Web Content Analysts Group Manager at Kaspersky Lab.

(Home page image courtesy Shutterstock)