East Ayrshire Campus Police Officers

Please find below useful guide produced by Police Scotland Cyber Harm Prevention Department. Any concerns regarding this or any other issues, please contact your local Campus Officer.

Sexting Online Mobile Safety 3157 PM 18

Online and mobile safety

‘Feel pressured to share a private picture of yourself ‘ ??.

Nobody should feel pressured into doing things they don’t want to do. Sex and sexual activity of any kind is a private act people engage in.

It’s not something that is owned or owed – even if you are in a relationship or have done sexual things with that person before.

Sexting

When people talk about sexting, they usually mean sending or receiving:

1. Naked pictures
2. Underwear shots
3. Sexual or dirty pics
4. Rude text messages or videos.

These are usually sent on messaging apps or emails to or from a friend, boyfriend, girlfriend or someone you’ve met online, in some cases someone online you don’t know and have never met before.

Sexting can happen for lots of reasons

• Everyone SAYS they’re doing it’
• Seen as ‘not sexy’
• Feel under pressure to sext to prove yourself to others
• Bullied or intimidated with persistent texts, taunts
• Threatened or blackmailed into sending pictures
• Want approval from a group of friends
• You in love with the person and trust them completely.

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What you need to know about sexting:

• Once you’ve sent an image or video you can’t control what happens to it
• Don’t let anyone guilt or pressure you into sending anything personal
• If you’ve sent a nude pic, have a conversation with the person you sent it to Ask them to delete it
• If an indecent or nude pic of you is posted online, you can contact the website directly or make a report online to try and get it removed
• Try not to panic – It’s not your fault.

Sometimes people send intimate photos of themselves because they have been made to feel guilty or they have been deceived or fooled with a sexual or financial motive.

Once one image is sent threats can then be made for you to provide other sexual images of a more intimate nature.

When sexting goes wrong, it can make you feel ashamed, guilty, embarrassed, anxious and isolated. But there are things you can do to prevent it from getting worse and allow you to take control again.

If anybody has been making you feel uncomfortable by asking you to send intimate images or to get naked online, you can report them to the Police or you could tell a trusted friend, your mum, dad, carer or a school teacher . It is wrong for anyone to be pressuring you in this way. It can make you feel like you’re trapped.

We will not judge you as we understand how easily sexting can happen and how quickly things can go wrong – You didn’t mean for this to happen, You didn’t mean for this to go so wrong.

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Steps to take

• First of all – are you safe
• Do you need support?
• Find the best person to support you right now…trusted friends, your family or school?
• Be honest about what has happened. People are only able to help you when they have all the facts
• Telling your parents may be your worst nightmare, but how are they going to help you if they don’t know?
• Don’t wait. The quicker you deal with it the more control you have.

The sooner you talk to somebody about the situation the better. This could be a trusted friend, your mum, dad, carer or a school teacher. But talk to someone, don’t suffer in silence, you have people round you who will support you.

If you felt strong enough you could try having a conversation with the person you sent the image to and ask them to delete it. The quicker you’re able to do this the better.

If you are in school, your school will have ways of dealing with these sorts of problems so speak to your Guidance teacher and take a trusted friend with you for support.

We encourage good digital citizenship and encourage use of mobile technology. We want all users to be personally aware of their actions and to better understand the risks they are open to when conducting their lives ‘On line’.

Please consider the links below for additional support.

https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/14_plus/

https://www.childline.org.uk/

https://www.ceop.police.uk/safety-centre/

https://parentzone.org.uk/parent-info

Please find below some useful information on Cyber Security that students and their parents may not be aware of.

Further information can be taken from here: https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents/articles/parents-guide-to-cyber-security/

If any pupil has concerns regarding cyber crime or security, please contact your local campus Police officer.

What is cyber security?

Cyber security is important because smartphones, computers and the internet are now such a fundamental part of modern life, that it’s difficult to imagine how we’d function without them.
Cyber security is the way we reduce the risk of becoming a victim of cyber crime. Cyber crime is criminal activity that either targets or uses digital technology, like a computer, a computer network or a mobile device, in order to steal money or information to sell on.

For example:
• Hacking to get information, including social media and email password
• Phishing, where bogus emails asking for security information and personal details
• Malicious software, through which criminals hijack files and hold them to ransom

Cyber security is about protecting the devices we use and the services we access online. It’s also about preventing unauthorised access to the personal information we store on these devices, and online.

6 Cyber Aware Tips

1. Protect your email account with a separate password
   Your email account contains lots of information about you and is the gateway to all your other online accounts. If you think about it, if someone gets into your email, they could potentially reset the password on all your online accounts. That’s why it’s so important to keep it secure by protecting it with a strong password that is different to all your others.

2. Create a strong password using three random words
   Essentially the longer and more unusual your password is, the stronger it becomes and the harder it is for a criminal to hack or guess. The best way to make your password hard to hack is by using a sequence of three random – but memorable words. For example, “BeachTarantulaOranges” (don’t copy this one though…).

3. Save your passwords in your browser
   You and your family probably have more online accounts than you can keep track of, from banking to shopping to social media to tv streaming services. You should avoid using the same password for different websites and do this by finding a way to remember passwords that works for you.
   S aving your passwords in your browser (for example, Google or Bing) is a great way to do this. You might recall seeing a pop up box when you log into a new website from your phone, tablet or laptop, that says “would you like to save this password?” – saying “yes” will take the burden away from you.
   Some people think saving your passwords in your browser isn’t a very secure thing to do, however the big technology companies have invested a lot of time and money in the security of their browsers. Its more important to have strong separate passwords on your accounts, saving them in your browser helps you remember them.
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4. Turn on two factor authentication
   For an added layer of security on your important accounts, such as email, social media and banking, turn on two-factor authentication (2FA). This is a free security feature that’s available on many popular services and helps to prevent criminals accessing your accounts even if they have your password.
   What happens is after you have entered your password, you are also sent a text or code when you log in, to check you are who you say you are. So if another person tries to access your account, they can’t even if they have your password.

5. Update your devices
   Making sure your devices – your laptop, phone, tablet, games console, smart speaker – have the most up to date software and apps is one of the best things you can do to immediately improve your security.
   Cyber criminals exploit weaknesses in software and apps to access your sensitive personal data, but providers are continually working to keep you secure by releasing regular updates. We’d encourage you to regularly check for updates on your devices and apps or set them to automatically update so you don’t have to think about it anymore.

6. Turn on automatic backup
   If you’ve ever left your phone in your pocket and not realised until you heard it bouncing round the washing machine, your first two thoughts were probably ‘that’s going to be expensive’ and ‘I hope I haven’t lost all my photos’.

We can’t help with the first thought, but the second one is easy to prepare for, just turn on automatic backup on your device. Not only will it help keep those treasured memories safe so you can access them again when you get a new device; it will also mean that if your phone, tablet or laptop is hacked you can recover quickly from your backup.

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Report suspicious emails

Ever wondered what you should do if you or your children receive an email you think might be scam? The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has recently launched its Suspicious Email Reporting Service, so if you receive an email you think is at all suspicious you can simply forward it to report@phishing.gov.uk.

If anything is found to be malicious, the NCSC will take it down and you will have helped protect others from falling victim to scams. Since it was launched in April, they have received over a million reports, which has led to over 10,000 new scams being taken down.