Digital Parenting Tricks: What should you do if your child receives a home address?

It could be an innocent act. Nowadays it’s pretty common for kids to set up meetings online. Certainly, you’ve talked with them about the dangers of meeting strangers, so they already know the difference between meeting someone they know and someone they don’t.

No matter, though, how much you’ve discussed this topic, use this opportunity to remind them once more about some basic safety rules:

to always ask a parent if it’s okay to meet with someone or visit someone’s home

never go alone to meet a person they only knew online. If they really want to do that, they should always tell a parent about their decision and take a parent along

always check the address and the meeting point. It should always be a public, known place

As part of your parenting toolkit, you need to think of your kids’ safety as a collaborative process: respect their privacy, build mutual trust, teach them to make wise decisions and to share them with you.

This article is part of the Digital Parenting Tricks series for the Bitdefender Parental Control* feature. Bitdefender worked with a psychologist to create a cheat sheet for parents and offer them some guidance on how to deal with some of the most troublesome digital challenges of our time. Because we want to use technology to find new ways to stand up to this kind of behaviour.

*The Detection of Cyberbullying and Online Predators functionality is no longer available in Bitdefender products.