Protecting Kids from Cyber Dangers is Focus of HTM Credit Union Program

Savvy Cyber Kids provides online safety and ethics educational and awareness sessions for parents, teachers, and students. (Courtesy photograph.)

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Whether its strangers, cyber bullies or any host of online dangers, HTM Credit Union is sponsoring a safety program in concert with Haverhill Public Schools for seventh graders.

“Growing Up in the Digital Age: How to Raise Savvy Cyber Kid,” helps students not only recognize dangers, but to take steps to guard their identities and images. It kicks off with a parent session, “Cyber Native or Naïve,” next Monday night at 6, at Albert B. Consentino School, 85 Washington St.

“The program reinforces the need to always question what they see online and seek adult advise to assess the authenticity and safeness of what they are experiencing,” according to a statement from HTM Credit Union. Besides taking certain protections, the program explains the “limitations of privacy settings, recognizing the need for appropriate online behaviors, to how to respond to negative interactions online with persistent strangers or cyber bullies.”

Besides dangers, students are reminded of the permanence of their online identities and impacts on internships, getting into a college and seeking a job.

Materials come from Savvy Cyber Kids, an Atlanta, Ga.-based nonprofit organization founded in 2007 by internet security expert, speaker and author Ben Halpert.

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