As privacy advocates, we often discuss what steps we take to personally secure our lives and devices yet rarely do we talk about the steps we take to do the same for those around us, more specifically, our families.

Like many of you, I have children and they are growing up in the digital age. They have e-readers, tablets, computers, video game consoles, and even cell phones. There are so many points of contact with big tech, or even strangers online it’s hard to keep track.

According to a recent survey by Startpage, nearly 40% of parents didn’t know that corporations could create and monetize their child’s digital footprint. Of the same percent, parents were unaware that bad actors could even sell their child’s information on the dark web. (https://www.startpage.com/blog/privacy-news/2020-parents-privacy-survey-startpage/)

Thankfully, there’s a lot you can do to keep your children’s data private and help keep them safe online.

First, it does start with you. Restrictions on screen time, password protecting app store installs that your children don’t know and deciding what devices can and cannot access the internet. When one of my children ask to download a new game, I quickly check what it needs access to work, what kind of data do I need to give it?

At the same time, we don’t want to limit our kids’ exposure to technology too much, but this is the world we live in today. They will need to learn how to use it, how to be safe using it, and while we do have to make some restrictions our children may not like, we don’t want them to miss out on things their friends are enjoying and talking about at school.

After you’ve made your choices on what limits and restrictions you will impose, you can then turn to some great privacy tools to help you along the way.

In my house, it starts with our internet connection. We have a Raspberry Pi running AdGuard Home (https://adguard.com/en/adguard-home/overview.html), with ad blocking and DNS settings that ensure ads are not reaching my children through their devices. We happen to use iPhones and iPads in our home, so I can first use Apple’s parental controls to either block or limit their access to apps, but I don’t stop there.

When we leave the house, the devices are set to Wifi only, so this way, I can control if and when they join a public network and I can turn on a VPN if I choose, or other apps such as Disconnect (https://disconnect.me/).

The changes aren’t that much more dramatic when it comes to the laptops the children use. Normally the laptop is only used by the older of the two that uses a laptop in school, which unfortunately is a Chromebook, but at home, I opted to install Linux because that’s the operating system I am most comfortable with. From there, I of course, connect the laptop to our AdGuard Home DNS and installed unGoogled Chromium so that the browser is what they are familiar with at school.

With these settings on their devices I can block access to YouTube if and when I want, I can block ads from getting through, but I can also block adult sites they could accidentally visit by typing in the wrong URL. I can also rest easy knowing that they won’t see ads they may be tempted to click on or will show them information that is not appropriate for them.

Another thing I realized was that my children often say, “can you Google that?” when looking for new information, and the truth is, we can Google that. However, we use Startpage and they don’t even realize it. It wasn’t hard to set the default search engine and know that whatever they searched for, no one was creating a profile of them.

Allowing children to connect to the internet can seem scary, and it can be unsafe if you’re not pro-active, and also reactive. Be aware of what apps are installed and what kind of parental controls they offer. Check to see if the apps have a chat component and if you can toggle it on and off. From there, you can install some of the simple tools to help aid you in the process and can then allow your children to explore the wonders of technology without substantially risking their privacy or safety.

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Dan Arel privacy and digital rights activist, curator of ThinkPrivacy.ch, as well as an award-winning journalist, and best-selling author. His work as appeared in the Huff Post, OpenSource, Hacker Noon, Time Magazine, and more. You can follow him on Twitter @danarel.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Startpage.