Checkout their website:
www.cybersecurityparents.com
- Understanding digital footprints is crucial for child safety.
- Parents must teach children about online risks.
- Open communication is key to building trust with children.
- Cyber bullying is a significant risk for kids online.
- Locking children’s credit can prevent identity theft.
- Foster parents can set rules for technology use.
- Conducting tech audits helps ensure safety.
- Behavior contracts can clarify expectations around technology.
- All devices with internet access need to be monitored.
- Staying updated on technology changes is essential for parents.
TRANSCRIPT:
Courtney Williams (00:01.496)
Hello and welcome to the Foster Friendly Podcast. My name is Courtney Williams. I’m a solo host today. Usually there are two of us on here, but I have two guests so it kind of evens out the numbers. But this is a follow-up episode. If you listen to the shocking and intense podcast that we had last week, likely you left there feeling a little overwhelmed and maybe a little bit like, Crud, what do I do now to protect my home and to protect our children? So this is a great follow-up to that.
Today, our guests, Chad and Kay, are going to help foster parents and parents in general answer the question, okay, we understand there’s a problem. We understand sex trafficking and we understand the crimes against children, especially vulnerable children and youth. But now how can we protect our home and the children that come into our home? Chad and Kay recently published and co-authored a book titled, Smart Parenting, Protecting Your Child in the Digital Age. I have the book, I have a copy right here. I’ve read it and we’ll talk more about that a little bit later.
But they also both have years of experience in cybersecurity and both helping individuals and enterprises in the ever-changing digital world, which is overwhelming. So welcome to the podcast, Chad and Kay.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (01:15.219)
Thanks for having us.
Kae David (01:16.72)
Yeah, awesome to be here. Thank you so much.
Courtney Williams (01:19.918)
So before we get into the serious talk, tell us just a little bit about yourselves and kind of what you do, maybe what your family, Kay, you can start.
Kae David (01:28.658)
Awesome. So yes, my name is Kaye David. I’ve been in cybersecurity for over 10 years now. I specifically work with tech enterprises and specialize with software and platform clients. So I help to essentially protect different enterprises across software and platform industry to be able to secure their environment.
And so whenever my friends or families essentially say or hear that I’m in cybersecurity, the next question is usually how do I help protect my kids? What can I do to protect my family? And so it helped to be able to come from that world and give some advice and tips. But there’s only one of me, there’s only one of Chad. So we wanted to put our brains together and have a little passion project to write this book. So really excited to be here and I’ll hand it over to Chad.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (02:23.349)
Thanks, Kay. So Chad Wciolewski, 16 years of cybersecurity experience. I primarily work in the public sector and K through 20 schools education. So K through 12 and higher education. I have a four and an eight year old, both little boys. So I’m the dad in the group. Everything that you’ll hear from me is really the things that I’m doing at home. I co-authored the book with Kay because I got the same questions at Little League games and every PTA meeting I went to. So it was really helpful to write this down and scale.
our ability to help individuals. So happy to be here.
Courtney Williams (02:57.326)
Yeah, thanks again. And if you notice, I did not pronounce last names in the introduction. Usually we say last names, but I didn’t even try. So thanks for saying it yourself.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (03:05.417)
Yeah, you’ll that.
Courtney Williams (03:08.75)
Okay, so again, our listeners are primarily foster parents or people considering foster care. I’ve been a foster mom for 17 years. We have nine children and have fostered over 80. So we’ve had a lot of kids come in and out of our house. A lot of kids that we’ve got a placement right now, a lot of teenagers come and go and a lot of them just come with a parenting background or being parented with no.
And I mean like zero parenting around electronics, zero safety precautions around electronics. And so then they come into our home and it’s like, my goodness, we have things that we do, but now they have devices that we don’t have passwords to and all this stuff. just kind of keep that in mind as we go through this conversation today, that, also keep in mind that a lot of our listeners are not.
Brains like you guys, we don’t understand a lot of stuff. And that’s what I love about your book too, is it is very much in layman’s terms. I understood the book and if I can understand it, anybody can when it comes to technology. yeah, just speak to the people like me who don’t understand the stuff that you guys necessarily understand. So as we get started, Chad, can you explain what is a digital footprint and how can we help our children understand the seriousness of it? And again, keeping in mind kids that come into our home who have not had any parenting around this.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (04:31.519)
Yeah, and good point. And a lot of the things that we’re telling folks in the book are things that we have to teach the kids at home because the teachers at school don’t really have the time to teach the basics anymore. So they don’t get into what a digital footprint is. A lot of these kindergartners and first graders just handed Chromebooks and they’re not told the basics. So it’s kind of on us as parents, foster parents at home to teach them some of the basics. The digital footprint is really anything that’s left intentionally or unintentionally on the internet.
So anytime you fill out a form for a school, anytime you fill out a website application, you’re leaving a little bit of a digital footprint. When grandma posts a picture of your newborn, digital footprint. Every picture that we post is a part of that digital footprint. So we like to inform people of how serious that can be when you think of a child’s photo being put on the internet and how AI can manipulate that down the road or today actually, and make that into a picture that isn’t real.
Or a child never really told us that they wanted their picture on the internet. So when they’re 18, they’ve got this slew of information on the internet that they had really no say in. So we all need to be conscious of that. It’s really exciting to post pictures. It’s really exciting to post updates, but we’re, we’re giving information to the bad guys, right? We can’t really control it once it gets on the internet. Um, and that’s just something that really be aware of.
Courtney Williams (05:54.503)
Yeah, it’s overwhelming to even stop and consider that and think about that. I I know for myself, I do post pictures of my kids. I don’t allow people to be friends. I’m sure people can still find it, right? Like even though I have like private accounts and all that. And, you know, I’ve used the excuses before of I’m a foster care and adoption recruiter. So I’m trying to share our stories so other people get inspired, but I’m sure there’s a lot of things that we can do to protect that even more if we are sharing pictures here and there.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (06:04.425)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney Williams (06:21.262)
And again, I think you go into some of those, you give tips in your book too for parents behind this and things to consider and think about even deeper at a deeper level.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (06:31.167)
Yep, adding a little bit of paranoia to the equation. Welcome to our world.
Courtney Williams (06:34.038)
Yeah.
Kae David (06:35.644)
Just a little, just a little. We don’t want you wearing tinfoil hats for the rest of your life, but just a little bit of paranoia is always good.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (06:40.509)
Yeah.
Courtney Williams (06:44.518)
Yeah, sure. So Kay, I also read your most recent blog post about how Australia introduced a ban on social media accounts for kids under 16. Why would you say they made that decision and what does it tell us as parents or as Americans?
Kae David (07:01.06)
No, it’s actually a great question. And now because of that, the EU is also considering a similar band and they’re starting to talk through it from the parliament perspective of what the enforcement would look like. So it is having more of a global impact. And part of the reason why Australia went forward with this is because they felt that the repercussions and just the risks for
those who are under the age of 16 having access to these platforms was not worth the exposure.
So, and there has been a really large debate, only from the regulation in Australia and those who are pushing this forward, but also the kids themselves, those who are gonna be impacted, the 16 and under. So, the counter argument is that it’s their right to have access to these platforms, because a lot of times, it’s a lot of communication, socialization is happening through these platforms. And so, there’s actually a pushback for the enforcement
enforcement of this new regulation from Australia. And so there’s always pros and cons on both sides for consideration. And that can be something that families in the US consider is how integrated is your child’s life into these platforms? And if it is, have you talked with or even had initial conversations of the different risks that exist online? For instance, like different predators or grooming methods that might exist.
or the fact that a lot of kids are now interacting with AI and AI agents and chatbots and they’re having human connections, so to speak, human connections with these AI agents. I have a lot of friends that are teachers in the school system and, you know, three years ago, two years ago, you know, one or two kids in their class would say that they’re dating chat GBT. Now they said that, you know, 70, 80 % of their classroom says they’re in a relationship.
Kae David (09:04.588)
with ChatGBT. So just thinking about not only the digital risks, so to speak, when you have your kids interacting with these platforms, but just the implications from a mental well-being and what kind of relationships are they learning on these platforms.
Courtney Williams (09:25.548)
Yeah, I get it. It’s overwhelming as a parent to think about and, and, know, they use those things in school. They use it in sports. Chad, I’m curious as a dad, I know your, your kids are a little bit younger, but right now if you were to say, my kids won’t get social media until what age, what would you say?
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (09:45.309)
I’m going for the age where it’s a, it’s a must, if you will. So I had a story from someone where they didn’t give their son a cell phone until he went to a conference somewhere and someone said, scan the QR code and fill out this form. He was the one child that had to go to the front of the room and use the instructor’s laptop. think it was. So at that point he was like, okay, I guess we need this now. So unless it’s a need for some social reason, some
reason for school, I don’t see a reason to give it to our kids any sooner than that need is prevalent. Teenagers.
Courtney Williams (10:21.934)
Yeah, and I’m finding that, yeah, I’m finding that with sports teams, like they’re all using Snapchat and other things to communicate, even the coaches. I’m like, for one, is that even appropriate? But for two, why are we making this the mandatory means of communication for our 12 year olds? And so in our kids, a lot of them haven’t had it. And so I’ve had to tell the coaches, well, they’re not having Snapchat at 12 or at 13, so you can privately message my child on a text message or me.
because that’s what we’re going to use.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (10:50.517)
That’s completely fair. Yeah, that’s your right as a parent to set those ground rules with the staff that we’re dealing with in sports and school. If they’re using something that you think is unreasonable, feels weird in your gut, go with it.
Courtney Williams (11:04.91)
Okay, so again, our last episode guest talked a lot about sex trafficking and the tie to foster care. My co-host Brian Mavis, who’s also the founder of America’s Kids Belong, he recently released a book called Go Upstream, and it shares of the 10 social wounds that are directly affected by foster care. And one of those is sex trafficking. In his research, he found that anywhere from 60 to 75 % of sex trafficking victims were in foster care at the time.
Again, there’s different research, but those are numbers kind of across the states. Chad, we often think of like that’s where my mind as a parent, especially foster care kids coming in who have trauma, who have hard things in their past, like my mind goes there. But there are a lot of other risks involved for kids besides the worst case of being trafficked. So what are some other risks for kids when it comes to social media, when it comes to online, being online or the devices?
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (11:47.093)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (11:58.153)
Yeah. We touched on some of it with like the Snapchat and some of the social media, they get into these relationships with chat pots and things like that. But cyber bullying is a really prevalent one. So it could happen if someone doesn’t even know that they’re being a bully. These giant group chats doesn’t even have to be on a platform. It could just be a classroom group chat. Things are said that are offensive to individuals and these children don’t know how to deal with that all the time. So we as parents have to have these conversations of
you know, who’s a trusted adult, who can I talk to? And a lot of the book isn’t it well, it’s about cyber security. The foundation of it is the communication piece. So all these risks that we mentioned in the book outside of the, some, some of the ones we’re talking about now, setting that foundation of I’m, I’m your friend in this equation. You can trust me and talk to me or, you know, talk to the teacher. They’re a trusted adult as well, but we need to set that foundation of communication in order to explore some of these risks.
Kae David (12:56.806)
Yeah. And I’ll just add onto that too, is, you know, we get a lot of questions of what technical controls can I put in place on these platforms to help prevent, you know, unnecessary exposure to mature content. And there’s, there’s a lot of different settings and configurations you can do. A lot of times actually to be like most up to date is you can Google, you know, how do I secure Snapchat? What should I know as a parent? What are the like settings I should have before my kid downloads it or I give
a phone to my child for Snapchat or any other platform you’re really considering. So there’s a lot of technical controls out there. But from the other side, really one of the best parental controls you can have is really strong communication. And what that means is making sure that your child knows they’re not gonna get in trouble with you if they come to you about something that maybe their gut doesn’t feel right about.
or they’re having a conversation with a stranger that just doesn’t sit well with them. So some of the risks that are on there is cyber bullying, as Chad put it, but also strangers interacting with your child or your child accidentally interacting with someone they think is their friend, but is actually not their friend and potentially could even be a deep fake. So being able to have the ability for a trusted adult for them to go to, to report it, is one of the best control
you can have in place.
Courtney Williams (14:26.938)
Yes, that leads into my next question. I do think I mean, relationship and open communication is probably the number one best thing you can do as a parent or caregiver, right? Is having that open communication. But besides giving away all your great ideas that you have in your book, if you were going to be like, what is the number one thing that parents can do besides that relationship and communication to protect their home? What would be like a must that you would say? Each of you go ahead and share.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (14:54.997)
I’m gonna do protect the individual. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead, okay.
Kae David (14:55.41)
go first. Oh, oh, go, Chad, go. We’re both just so excited. Really? We know one we know no. Um, yeah, don’t take it. Yeah, exactly. I’m just like, don’t you dare? Um, no, I’ll just say so. In our book, actually on page 77. We have an activity. We designed the book.
Courtney Williams (15:01.548)
Don’t take my answer.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (15:03.305)
Yeah.
Kae David (15:15.762)
for it to be torn up. So we actually have a digital contract on page 77 and the idea is for you to rip it out and go through it with your child to be able to say, let’s talk through.
what rules we have in place and why and come to an agreement as to, you know, what can we mutually decide is right for our family. So I think that’s a must is going through the why with with your child to be able to say, well, this isn’t just because I say so. It’s, know, we both agreed, you know, no phones in the bedroom. And we know that because X, Y and Z. And so everyone in this house doesn’t take their phone into their bedroom.
So that’s my golden rule, number one rule. hopefully, maybe I beat Jehud to it. I’m interested now. What do you think?
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (16:08.245)
I tell folks that the minute your child is born and they’re handed a social security number or you know as a foster parent you get a child into your home they also have a social security number they’re now vulnerable for their identity to be stolen and as a minor they can’t just log on to Equifax, TransUnion, the like all three of the major credit bureaus and lock their own credit you as their caregiver or parent have to do that
takes like four hours. I did all the research and did it for my two boys and locked their credit because in my state, the student information system was breached and a bunch of students identities were stolen. Imagine turning 18 and going to open up your first credit card and realizing that your credit has just been completely ruined and you had no idea because you were on a watch list. And even if you were on a watch list, maybe you weren’t informed. We have a blog on the website, cybersecurityparents.com.
that I’ve documented everything that I did and continue to document every time I lock down a new device that I give my children. But I’ve made it a little bit easier for folks. If you want to explore locking credit, it’s probably the smartest thing to do. There’s a lot of detection and monitoring that we can do with some of the platforms when they’re breached. You get that, that free detection service, but this locks it like straight locks it. If someone goes to apply for a credit card with your child’s information, social security number.
any of that date of birth, all that personal identifiable information, they’re not going to be able to safest thing to do.
Courtney Williams (17:35.631)
I have a family member who I know they were children. They had a parent take out loans and their name and they didn’t find out until they turned 18 and car loans. And it makes me even think even deeper with foster care because we often are dealing with mental health. We’re often dealing with anger at parents. We’re often dealing with parents who are struggling financially.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (17:49.333)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney Williams (18:05.12)
And so just makes me think like, I wonder, you know, how many have used their kids. so we probably couldn’t do that as foster parents, but definitely something to keep in mind and even teach them about, right? Cause some of them are so vulnerable themselves where they’ll sign off on things or not think about the ramifications of things before, you know, 25, when your brain’s more developed.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (18:24.65)
Yeah.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (18:28.617)
I’ll have to some research on the, I’ll admit that I’m not too familiar with the foster side of caregivers rights in that situation. So I, a parent, I had to send in a copy of my driver’s license just to prove that like, this is a child that I am responsible for. So I’d say still explore the blog and y’all as foster parents know way more about the system than I do, but at least there’s some steps spelled out there that you could possibly explore.
Courtney Williams (18:43.854)
Yeah.
Courtney Williams (18:53.176)
Yeah.
Kae David (18:53.52)
And as I’m thinking just on the fly, something that could be interesting is if you’re not able to freeze their basically social security, their credit, maybe even at least doing a free credit check.
with their social security because that’ll be indicative of, know, maybe it should be a good score, one would hope, but if it is a really low score, it might be because someone’s already taken out a loan, a mortgage, something on that social security number. So that way, at least the child’s informed and aware and can take actions to say, hey, look, this is what’s going on with my social security. And I don’t necessarily think, you know, I believe
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (19:08.682)
Mm-hmm.
Kae David (19:38.557)
This can be a fact-check moment, but the child might be able to even do the credit score rating themselves, potentially, if they know their social security. So that’s one thing, just thinking on the fly, that maybe foster parents can do.
Courtney Williams (19:52.111)
Yeah. Yeah. And again, educating, right? Educating these kids who come into our home. That’s big thing. So, okay, let’s chat more about foster parents. In most states, there’s something that’s called the Bill of Rights, the Foster Youth Bill of Rights. In our area, the Bill of Rights is for all foster youth, so it doesn’t have an age on it. So we don’t know, does it start at five? Does it start at 12? I mean, it’s the Bill of Rights, but one of the things on our Bill of Rights is that they have the right to…
Kae David (19:57.605)
Exactly.
Courtney Williams (20:20.524)
electronics, they have a right to a phone to communicate with their family members. And the heart behind that makes sense, right? If kids are, you know, torn apart from their families, if they are apart from grandma, mom, dad, brother, whomever, we want them to have communication with them. But of course, the kids and care and even their lawyers will fight for them, meaning, no, all 10 year olds have a phone. So this 10 year old should have a phone or whatever it might be.
And again, it looks different case by case because different lawyers will fight for different things for the kids. Different kids will ask for different things. Caseworkers, you all the people involved, it just gets really sticky. So one thing that I found though is we have kids that come to our home with these phones. Again, usually not password protected, usually no parental controls, usually no education behind it. And foster families don’t understand that you can push back in the sense of, yes, they might come with a phone, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t have your own rules in your home.
that you can’t say we’re going to leave our phones on the kitchen counter at night or not have electronics in bedrooms or whatever it might be. People just think that that means that they have free reign. You could even set passwords and talk to the caseworker and be like, hey, I’m not going to allow this in my home unless we have a password and we know the password to get into this phone or whatever it might be. But one of the big things that we’ve had an issue with is the location settings because these kids come into our care. We had this 17-year-old young man come into our home.
In the first 24 hours, we’re getting to know him. He’s telling us about his gang relations. He’s telling us about people who are out to get him. And first day in our home, we look outside. We live in the country. We live out in the mountains in the country. So we don’t live, I people can’t walk to our house. I mean, you could walk to her house, but you’re not going to walk to our house. Right. And we look outside. yeah. Yeah. And be like full of energy and gumption to drop, to walk where we live. but we see this guy walking up our driveway.
Kae David (22:05.276)
You’d have to go out of your way, yeah.
Courtney Williams (22:14.51)
And he looked like he was up to no good. And so my husband goes outside and starts chatting and he’s like, oh, I’m here to see so and so. And long story short, he’s had his location on some sort of thing, comes to our house. We didn’t know if this is some, of these guys you’re just telling us is out to get you. We don’t know if this is a friend. So we had to have explained to him, like, this isn’t okay, but it these huge alarm bells in our minds of how many other kids have been in our home who we were not thinking location settings.
Right? Like, is there anything that you guys know that we can do to protect, like in a case like that? Like, do we have to have their password for every social media site to shut off the locations? Do we have to, like, we don’t have the control of a lot of it. So is there anything you guys can think of how we can protect our home or things that we can utilize for the home setting where we might not have access to their accounts?
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (23:10.419)
Yeah. So, but you do have access to, like you can get your hands on their device. I’d say do a tech audit. So understanding when we say tech audit, it’s more broadly of like, what are all the different pieces of technology that they’re touching? But in a phone, I mean, that’s just layers of technology. You can go into an Apple device and see all the different location service that are, have been recently used or not used by application. And some of them need it. Some of them don’t.
And this starts with the conversation of understanding application granting permissions whenever they’re installed, especially for younger children. Does this application need to take a picture with a location and have access to your microphone and have the yada, yada, yada, all the other settings? Probably not. If it’s a picture app, it just needs to be able to take pictures. So let’s not give it all the permissions in the world or allow it to follow your metadata from application to application. But
All that to say there’s a conversation to be had upfront about limiting access and you can go on a device and see which applications are using location services and turn that off.
Courtney Williams (24:19.305)
I you’d add K.
Kae David (24:19.504)
Yeah, I would just add to that of like, being able to if the child if you’re able to get access to their phone and just see what applications are doing location sharing, and maybe talk through like, okay, do you really need to have like Snapchat know where your location is when you’re talking with your friends. And it’ll show you depending on the device, all the different applications where location sharing has been allowed or permitted. And then again, I would
just kind of talk through because a lot of times it can be like, well, I want to stay in contact with my friends. want them to know where I am. And like, you don’t have the right to tell me I can’t do that. And so having the conversation of look, I totally get it. You have a connection somewhere else. You have your friends you want to stay in contact with them. I 100 % understand that. But can you trust all these friends that they’re not going to try and do you harm for instance, in your situation, the 17 year old knew that there was going to
be people that are tracking and monitoring his location with the intention of potentially causing him harm. So being able to say, is that really someone you want to be sharing your location with and you can’t limit it for who you’re sharing with on certain applications you’re sharing with the world. So being able to have those conversations as to why it’s important to really reduce your exposure from your family, Courtney, your family’s exposure and safety, but also the foster child that’s staying with your family.
And then just being able to say, if there’s certain trusted adults or trusted friends that you’re like, I really need them to know where I am for my own mental well-being. want at least someone I really trust, especially maybe it’s a new relationship, the new child coming into your home. And they’re like, I don’t know you yet. I don’t trust you. I’m still trying to figure it out. This person that lives in Chicago knows me. I know them and I just want them to know where I am at all times. There are certain ways to be able to say, okay, then let it so that they can always be sharing.
sharing the location with that trusted adult trusted person, but it just being that one person, not the entire world. So those kind of conversations to show that, look, I get it. We might still be getting to know each other. You’re still trying to suss me out, so to speak. If you have a trusted adult or trusted friend, go ahead and share your location with them for just like this one location, so to speak, like on just this one application. So they always know where you are and you know that you can trust them. But let’s not make it
Courtney Williams (26:25.038)
Hmm.
Kae David (26:48.884)
so the entire world knows, because then there could be some, know, mal or terrible actors that are trying to find you and we’re just trying to protect you. So it’s a long-winded way that goes back to having the conversation as to why, so that the communication goes both ways with both you and the foster child.
Courtney Williams (27:09.422)
Mm.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (27:10.409)
And you asked about the home Courtney, it’s harder with cell phones because they have their own cellular signal. But if you’re using a device that’s on wifi and before you go out and buy some fancy router, everyone should check the router and see if it has parental controls. You can lock down what types of things happen through your router that go out to the internet. You can block certain websites. can restrict the router to only go to certain websites, but that’s something we haven’t gotten.
The opportunity to write a very advanced blog about that yet. We want to, we’re going down that route. but we have, we have to pick our favorite router to do so. There are some basic things that everyone can do with whatever you have though.
Courtney Williams (27:44.3)
Yeah.
Yeah, and Kay, you mentioned earlier about behavior or electronic contracts, but I think that’s another way that foster parents can understand. Again, yes, they might have a right to their devices, but you have right to make an electronic contract. And on that contract, even saying something like, you know, phones will be checked unannounced and location services might be something that I’m checking for. And if you are turning these on and we’ve agreed that you are not, then phone might be taken away for however long, you know.
Kae David (28:02.278)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney Williams (28:17.646)
But again, just those are things that foster parents can do. They don’t think they always realize that they can set these rules. They can have a contract. They can discuss, can you guys think of anything else that would be pertinent to have on a contract? Maybe thinking specifically to foster youth or kids who have never had parental controls before.
Kae David (28:38.254)
I would say one thing is really important is like a safety word. So that way your foster child knows like maybe they’re still like, you know, they’re in touch with bad relations from their past and they’re still like trying, they don’t know if you could, they want to find a way to be able to come to you without maybe showcasing that they’re in trouble. So having a family safety word is really important and coming up with it. So that way they know that no matter what, if they say, yeah, no, really can you pick up like
the cherry soda, I don’t know, I’m just giving you an example, then you know like, okay, so something’s going wrong. Cherry soda is our safety word. And you come to that agreement to say, hey, you always will have this safety word. If something’s coming up online, and someone’s near you that you just don’t trust, you can always call me or text me and say our safety word together. I think that’s a really important one, especially also with like, deep fakes are becoming really relevant, where they’re getting, you know,
voicemail, going to voicemail, taking the recording from the voicemail and re-engineering so that it sounds like someone’s in trouble and calling you. So being able to test it and say, know, is this really Courtney? What’s our safety word? And that’s way you know it’s like it’s a deep fake.
Courtney Williams (29:55.407)
That’s good. Check if you have anything else you’d have on a behavior or same behavior that we use behavior contracts. Yeah.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (30:00.359)
I mean, she took them. She, the safe word is an important one. safe word, passphrase, it also goes into like the, passwords and how they’re developed. That’s, think it’s discussed on the contract, understanding what a safe password is, it’s not password one, two, three, Like, let’s, let’s be a little bit more advanced here. Let’s use some multifactor authentication when it’s available. explaining those technological controls to children will help.
Kae David (30:02.482)
I took it, I took it, yeah.
Courtney Williams (30:19.566)
Hmm.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (30:28.661)
protect them in the long run. But yeah, the passphrase is my favorite. I’m not going to tell you what mine is, otherwise I’d have to change it.
Courtney Williams (30:34.638)
Yeah, and it is a great, I’ve never thought about that before, to be honest with our foster youth. We do have a phrase often we’ve used, you know, if they’re in a situation, you know, Christmas time with my family and a lot of people around and they’re like, Hey, I just I need out right now. You know, we have our little things or hand motions that they might do for something like that, but not thinking about it for electronics in that sense. So that’s a great idea.
Kae David (30:53.712)
Yeah.
Courtney Williams (31:03.086)
I think we often also think about just phones. That’s probably the primary one. I think, you there’s just so much that they can get into. Like I said, most foster youth come with a phone, so it becomes a big issue. But we think about phones and computers. think, okay, I have to know about their phone. I have to know about the computer. But are there other devices within the home where we really need be safeguarding and thinking about things that they might be able to get into or whatnot on besides just a phone or computer?
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (31:29.409)
yeah. Yeah. So I went on a trip recently and it was a very long one to another country. And I said, I’m going to need a fire tablet for this. There’s just no way that a four and eight year old are going to hold still for that long. So fire tablet, access to the internet. If a device has access to the internet, it’s probably got chat capabilities. It has a web browser on it where they could go to websites. So I locked down Kindle fire.
Nintendo switch, same thing. Everyone thinks it’s just, you know, playing video games. There are some risks within those video games of talking to strangers and chat capabilities. But again, at the same time, if it connects to the internet, it probably has a browser on it and it could probably go to a website. So a lot of folks don’t think about those things, but check anything that has access to the internet, and do a little tech audit on that device to see what else it can possibly do. You can shut some of those things down. my sons have never used their devices with the internet turned on.
I load everything up and if they’re playing a game and it needs access to the internet, I guess it’s time to stop playing that game for the day. Move on to the next game because we don’t need access to the internet. It’s not necessary for these games to be fun, if you will.
Courtney Williams (32:40.27)
Hmm.
Kae David (32:41.392)
Yeah, and I’ll add to that. when I visited Chad’s house and like was hanging out with his family, his kids already started being able to use some of these devices that had to get locked down was the voice activation devices that you might not necessarily think about. So the Hey Google or Hey Alexa, thinking about I think for comical purposes, your kids had learned how to say Hey Google make like fart noises.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (33:02.933)
Mm-hmm.
Kae David (33:11.406)
So the repercussions, yeah, the repercussions were relatively low. You know, it was just Chad sanity. So that’s already gone. but I think thinking about to Chad’s point, anything connected to the internet, which is so much. But one of the things you might miss is the voice activation. So anything that’s connected to your house where it is voice activated, being aware of what information is connected. hopefully,
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (33:11.824)
yeah, that happens all day around here.
Kae David (33:41.409)
it’s not a hey Google what’s my MX again but thinking through you know what what do you have access to through that voice activation and the other big one is always like any type of gaming consoles that are connected to the internet that would probably be like
a big priority due to the fact that there is a lot of online gaming apps that have anonymous chat groups or chat rooms. And so just being aware of, know, if they’re playing their Xbox or PlayStation, if you have it at home or they they bring something into the house, even as simple as a tablet, just being able to say, hey, I’d love to be able to look at the type of apps you have on there, just because there’s a lot of scary people in this world. And I want to make sure that you’re able to talk to
your friends and who you know and let’s make sure that the people you don’t know aren’t communicating with you or trying to find you.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (34:36.469)
And let’s go into the voice activation thing for a second because I’m sure everyone’s freaking out right now with their Alexa’s and Siri’s and Google’s and they’re like, my God, it’s listening. And it is, but you can lock it down so it only listens to your voice and not your children’s. After a certain hour in the day, my sons can say whatever they want and they’ll say, I’m sorry, I can’t do that right now because I shut it down for the day. It’s past bedtime. I’m not gonna hear you talking to your assistant late into the evening. And then a fun anecdote.
Courtney Williams (34:41.294)
Thank
Courtney Williams (34:45.07)
and
Kae David (35:03.346)
No more fart noises, yeah, after 9pm. Yeah.
Courtney Williams (35:05.083)
Yeah.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (35:05.685)
No, it’s just time to go to bed. But when Alexa first came out, I accidentally ordered a nine foot Christmas tree, folks. And it’s that easy, right? Like you have to be careful sometimes, but I needed it. It was fine. I still use it every year. But I said, look, find me a nine foot Christmas tree for my living room because I just moved in. And next thing I knew I had a Christmas tree on my front porch. So be careful out there.
Courtney Williams (35:29.502)
Yeah, yeah, it just makes me think of a couple other even just protection, but also monetary. We had a foster youth one time. I mean, our kids were a little bit younger and we had protections, but we didn’t think about having like a password on our Amazon Prime. And foster youth got up in the middle of the night and ordered the whole Freddy’s series and a whole bunch of scary movie series, like multiple ones, charged over $300 to our Amazon Prime account in the middle of the night. And I was like, huh.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (35:37.14)
Yeah?
Courtney Williams (35:58.329)
Good thing I caught that, but too late, know, type thing. And then also the apps, there are so many apps now that I had no clue have chat functions and chat rooms. know, even like the Bible app has chat now, Pinterest has become social media. Like all these things that you think are one thing, but you gotta know what they’re doing on these devices and on these apps.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (36:00.095)
Mm-hmm.
Kae David (36:01.169)
Yeah.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (36:10.739)
In-app purchases too,
Kae David (36:22.15)
Yep, it’s true.
Courtney Williams (36:24.366)
So, okay, devices, apps, technology. I honestly just get super overwhelmed. Honestly, my husband and I got an argument about this yesterday because I feel like he doesn’t check the phones enough. And he’s like, but that’s like, you’re the stay at home mom. So it’s kind of your job, you know? And I just, it overwhelms me. mean, it’s, it just, brings a lot of tension in families. It brings a lot of like overwhelming feelings of I’m not doing enough and it’s changing. It’s ever changing. feel like I said, like the Pinterest, what Pinterest used to be is not what it is today.
Kae David (36:36.56)
yeah.
Courtney Williams (36:52.394)
I wouldn’t have known to have my teenager not shown me, you know? How can we stay up to date and educated on all these changes that keep on happening if it’s not our jobs like it is for you guys?
Kae David (37:02.746)
Yeah, no, it’s a good question because the good thing for Chad and I is it makes it so we constantly have to learn and be up to date and know what the new technology is and how threat actors can leverage it. And it makes sure that we stay employed for a very long time. But for a family that’s super busy, you’re like, OK, I checked the application yesterday. I think I’m good. And then you’re like, they had an update, a system update today. And now I can, on Pinterest, talk to someone. And you didn’t even know.
about it. So I guess the first thing I would advise is take a breath because it is overwhelming 100%. We’re not saying that it’s not. And just being able to try and do
even just one step at a time is something. nothing’s ever gonna be perfect. There’s always gonna be new technology updates. So taking a breath and saying, look, I’m never gonna probably be as up to date as the technology and accepting that unless you have an end with every single platform and application and their product engineering team. And they call you and say, Courtney, by the way, we’re gonna have a system update tomorrow at 12 o’clock. Like just check the app, which then I think your phone is gonna be ringing all the time.
One thing you can do though is either depending on your time and capability is just say, you know, I’m going to do a quick check once a month and just basically say, okay, I have these 20 applications that I know is on the child’s phone. So let me just see if there’s been any more applications they’ve added. So now it’s a list of 25 and candidly just using a Gemini, a chat, GBT, a cloud, whatever, whatever technology you want to do.
you can say, hey, these are the applications. Can you please tell me if there’s been any system updates and put it into a list? And that way it does the research for you. And it can say, hey, yes, this application, Snap, had a system update on October 11th, and this is the new features that you can do. These are the privacy settings you can do. Otherwise, you’re going to be doing so much Google searching of every individual application. You want to try and streamline it. There’s always what we call in tech a hallucination.
Kae David (39:14.74)
with these. So sometimes it’ll say information that’s not real, but at least it’s a starting point. So then you can say, all right, I’m going to open up the snap and see, you know, this system change made it so that you can talk to strangers online. So we’re going to set it down based off of these privacy settings. So doing like a monthly audit just to be able to see. Otherwise, if you try and do daily or weekly, you might actually go insane. So just doing a monthly is the recommendation. But if you’re like,
Courtney Williams (39:39.765)
Yeah.
Kae David (39:44.527)
I don’t even have time to sleep. can’t even do a month. Okay, that’s again, that is fine. As long as you’re trying is always a great step. Maybe it’s once every three months or once every six months. It might not be always the most up to date, but at least you’re trying to check in and stay on top of it as best as you can and that what time allows. So that would be my recommendation.
Courtney Williams (39:47.223)
Thank
Courtney Williams (40:06.466)
That’s great. Yeah. And a great use of AI, right? Talk about that.
Kae David (40:11.384)
In a good way. Exactly. So, you know, just throw it in there and it’ll aggregate a lot of information available for you. So that way you’re not going, right, number one application, let me Google number two application. Let me Google number three. You’re going to you’re going to go crazy. So just try and put it into one centralized chat bot or chat experience that is able to aggregate all the online findings for you and provide recommendations again, just as a starting point and then do your own due diligence where you try it out.
and be aware that sometimes it is misinformation or what we call a hallucination where it’s an error but that’s okay at least you’re trying and that’s like the best step you can take.
Courtney Williams (40:52.706)
Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (40:54.357)
always fact check your AI. mean, the amount of times I had that conversation, I make my chat bots tell me exactly where they got the information from because most of the time they’re just trying to make you happy as an end user and give you a bunch of information that’s completely fake. just like you used to write your papers in college and high school, it can provide references and tell you exactly where it pulled it from. So be aware of that.
Kae David (40:56.473)
Always.
Courtney Williams (41:08.942)
Yeah.
Courtney Williams (41:19.544)
Great tip. Okay, again, thinking about our audience, thinking about your book. Is there anything else that you’d like to share with our listeners regarding cybersecurity, protecting the home?
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (41:31.359)
Yeah, on the book front, I hope everyone can go out and get a copy. If you go to cybersecurityparents.com, there’s several different ways to buy it. The primary way is Amazon. Once you get it, at the end of every chapter, there are four quick tips, five to 20 minutes, things that you can check off as your child gets older. There’s also little mini posters in the back that based off of your child’s age, you can have specific conversations. There’s an elementary one, middle school and high school.
The conversation drastically changes over the years from, buddy, what’s a password to, hey, you’re about to apply for a job. Let’s do an audit on your online presence and what that looks like to make sure that you’re all set there. But the book definitely helps break those down by age range to help you feel less overwhelmed because it is a heavy lift. This takes time. I’m still working through the book as my child grows up, but it’s nice to have that tool.
sitting on my desk to be able to reference it from time to time.
Courtney Williams (42:31.854)
And it is, it’s, like I said, it’s, written for people like me. It’s written in a way that you can understand, but I do love all the conversation starters, all the tips and, you know, breaking even down by these are quick, quick things you can do. These are things that take them, take a little bit longer. Um, very, very practical.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (42:45.887)
Mm-hmm.
Kae David (42:48.946)
I was just going to say if there’s questions that your listeners have that maybe we haven’t covered, we love questions. So being able to go onto our website or emailing us directly. So our website is cybersecurityparents.com, but you can contact us at info at cybersecurityparents.com. And if you have a question, write it in and maybe we can even make it into a detailed blog post or we’ll email you back with some tips and tricks. So if we
didn’t cover something that’s on top of people’s minds, then info at cybersecurityparents.com is a great way to just ask us a question and we’ll do our best to answer it.
Courtney Williams (43:30.4)
That’s great. And thanks for sharing. the blog, which is also found on your website, the blog, I’ve read quite a few of them, again, helpful and just great topics. So kind of briefly, I’m like, which one of these pertain to me? And maybe even something you can do. Set a reminder once a month, go check out the blog and see if there’s something that pertains to you that you can, like I said, I get overwhelmed by this because it does seem like it’s just so much and ever changing. But there are things that we can do.
Kae David (43:53.863)
It’s like never ending, technology is never ending. Unless you decide to like switch to carrier pigeons for communications from now on, it’s like constantly changing.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (44:03.829)
Yeah. There are some, I don’t know if you noticed there’s in October, we did some gamification of cybersecurity and made it spooky fun games for elementary age kids. We’re, we’re going to release a new one. That’s for all year round. It’s not specific to Halloween, but if your kid loves word searches, mazes, coloring, give them things like this to talk about cybersecurity. It’s great when they’re word searching for the word password and they’re like, all right, you found password. What is a password?
So you can have those conversations just by gamifying it a bit, which is a lot of fun.
Courtney Williams (44:37.016)
Yeah, yeah, great. Well, Chad and Kate, thank you so much for coming on and sharing with our listeners. Like I said, we don’t want to scare people, but a little bit is okay. A little bit is good. It’s good to be in the know and good to have practical resources and tips and tools, things that we can really do in our homes. And again, thank you. Well, these kids who come with just hard backgrounds and…
Kae David (44:52.946)
Just the loom. Yeah.
Courtney Williams (45:03.448)
hard stories and if we can do something to make their future a little bit better, even when it comes to understanding electronics, understanding the healthy ways of using them, that is something we need to be considered of as foster parents. So I think you guys did a great job of helping us understand that. So thanks again for joining us today. Hope you have a good day.
Chad Rychlewski – CSP (45:22.581)
Thanks for having us.
Kae David (45:22.727)
Thank you. Thank you so much.
