Students urged to stay safe online

The dangers of weak internet passwords and privacy settings were driven home to students by a past pupil of their school yesterday.

The teenagers at Gaelcholáiste Mhuire at the North Monastery in Cork City learned how easy it can be for their pictures to be spread around the world, or for their personal information to be picked up by people chasing their money through identity theft on Facebook or other social media sites.

With many students having hundreds of friends on Facebook, the importance of their privacy settings was highlighted by a series of videos showing how everyday pictures can be picked up by strangers of all ages around the world. There was also caution urged about sending intimate pictures to boyfriends or girlfriends, because it is so easy for them to get into the wrong hands.

“I’m living in Cork 40 years and I don’t have 600 friends. But if you have 600 Facebook friends and they each have 600 friends, that could be 360,000 people seeing your picture, so do things like set your privacy so only friends can see your posts or your photos,” said Pádraig Kelleher, who attended the school in the 1980s.

As logistics manager with McAfee Ireland, he was leading a team from the internet security firm’s Cork base which visited 25 schools in the city as part of the firm’s global community day.

Students in second-year and third-year classes were also shocked to hear about some of the potential for attacks on their computers, through viruses.

“We did a survey last year about the sites that come up on search engines when you put in celebrity names. We found Emma Watson was the ‘most dangerous’ because 10% of sites that are listed when you search her name could be harmful,” he said.

The advice here for young people was to install anti-virus software that will alert them about sites, but that will not stop them from entering them, and they were advised such programmes can be downloaded free from any number of companies.

Louise Ní Shíocháin, a third-year student in Naomh Finín, said some of the messages really struck home with her and her classmates, particularly about limiting who they are “friends” with online.

“People could have over 900 friends and they don’t have a clue who most of them are. Everyone got a big fright, people will be going home to check their private settings and they will be a lot more careful what they say online,” she said.