What are Privacy Risks?

Next, display or distribute page six of the booklet and read “Why Worry About Privacy… What Can Happen?” to the class.

After each item, ask prompting questions to extend understanding:

1. Companies can track your online activities and build detailed profiles about you to send you highly targeted ads. Sometimes it’s cool, but it can also start to feel creepy.

• Ask: Does it feel “creepy” to you that they watch what you do online and use that to decide what ads to show you? Would you turn that off if you could? Why or why not?
  • Make sure students know that most online services do let you turn off ad targeting, though it’s not always easy to do.
• Some services, like the search engine DuckDuckGo, only use what you’re doing right now (your most recent search) and don’t remember anything about you between visits. Would that be less “creepy”? Why or why not?

2. Information about yourself you’d prefer to keep private or that might not be true can be posted online by someone else and this can be really embarrassing or hurtful.

• Ask: Can you think of a time when somebody shared something about you that you wish they hadn’t?
  • This doesn’t have to be in an online context — it could be something like telling a secret, for example.
• How can we find out if it’s okay to share something that was shared with us online?(Introduce the idea of asking the person before sharing.)

3. Things you post online today can stay there forever and can affect what friends, teachers, and even future employers think about you.

• Ask: How many people’s parents shared baby pictures of them on social media?
  • How many would like all their friends to see those pictures now?
• How can we decide if something we are about to post might be embarrassing in the future?

4. As you grow up, you may change your mind, or feel or think differently about things you posted online when you were younger. You might want to erase what you posted, but then you find out you cannot.

• Ask: Why is it hard to totally delete things you have posted online?
  • Because people might have made copies that you don’t know about.
• What are some ways that we can make it easier to delete online content?
  • Make sure to mention that we can help each other by being responsible in how we share other people’s content. If we don’t make copies, there are fewer copies to be deleted.

5. Not protecting your privacy online can make you vulnerable to cyberbullies and can even risk your physical safety in the real world.

• Ask: How might somebody use your personal information to hurt you, online or offline? How can we decide if something we’re about to share might make us vulnerable?

6. Scammers can trick you into giving them information to get into your — and your family’s — accounts and can even steal money. Lots of times these thieves can be hard to catch.

• Ask: What are the signs that something might be a scam?
  • When they’re asking you to give out your personal information or click a link.
• What should you do if you think that something might be a scam?
  • Talk to an adult you trust right away!

Now display or distribute pages seven and eight. Read the “Real Privacy Dangers” scenarios to the class, then have students decode the advice to the characters on page eight.

Here are the answers:

Ask:

• Do you agree with this advice?
• Why or why not?
  • Prompt students about the need to think before you post content, talk to people online, or follow links in emails or messages.
• What other advice might you give to Mei, Kamran, Quinn or Luke?

Next, have students access the student chapter Match-It or distribute page eleven of the pamphlet.

Have students complete the matching columns activity individually, then take it up in class.