Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp… they are a fact of life today. Our children communicate across social media, a medium we might not understand very well, and that, naturally, sparks a degree of fear and many questions. What are the risks and what can we do to minimise them?
1) Upon looking through your children’s new Facebook contacts, you realise that they are adults you don’t know; 2) Unexpected session start notifications arrive in your inbox, alerting you to an attempted theft in your children’s social media accounts; 3) Charges on your credit card for purchases of goods or services that you did not buy come from an online game called Crush Royale.
Silvia Barrera is a police inspector with a master’s degree in IT security. An expert in cyber-crime, she has led a research group on police social media and the Technological Research Unit’s digital forensics group. She is the author of Claves de la Investigación en redes sociales (“Keys to Research on Social Media”) and of the novel Instinto y pólvora (“Instinct and Gunpowder”).
