With school going back and part of the curriculum being online, you’re being warned to protect your kids from Internet scammers.

The Better Business Bureau’s Karla Laird was on the NL Morning News and said a new way of learning can bring up a new set of problems. “As parents it’s going to be important that you keep track of your child’s online activities. That means knowing what they’re doing, what kind of apps they’re accessing. Knowing the different social media platforms they’re going to be on. What ever sites the school is sending them on, you need to be aware of the site works.”

“Generally speaking, when they’re online you want to know, what are they signing into? What are the different platforms asking of them when they sign in? What kind of information does that require? Is it just their name of are they asking for more things like their address?”

“And because children are just eager to jump onto the platform do and enjoy whatever it has to offer they may not realize the dangers of the information they are providing.”

One thing for parents to look out for is clickbate, from contests to software. “Especially with the contests, as parents you want to make sure you’re warning your kids, that yes it may look attractive, yes it may look like something fun if you win but at the same they are generally collecting a lot of information about you so you could be feeding information to scammers and we all the dangers of that if it gets into the wrong hands.”

Laird pointed out one of the most important things to watch for “At the same time, as parents, what is very important whatever device your child is using, especially for school or on a regular basis, make sure there is no credit card information stored on that platform or that device.”

“We know kids, if they see something they like and if it says access here, they will click first and think after and you don’t want to see charges popping up that you can’t account for so that’s definitely something you want to keep in mind as well.”