Anonymous gaming – Who is playing with your children?
Children come into contact with (online) games even at an early age. Be it on your own tablet, mobile phone from friends or via their parents’ devices. A fascinating world not only for children. Take a close look at what and with whom your child is playing. For many children, free online games are very tempting. They cannot filter out fraudulent offers yet and risk sharing personal data with one click. Children and adolescents can encounter violence or sexual content, especially when playing online, and quickly become victims of assaults themselves. Especially data that were thoughtlessly published on the Internet provide a target for so-called cyberbullying.
And regardless of whether or not gaming is anonymous, communication in games is often public. For this reason, the game chat is the wrong place for personal information, such as email address or telephone number. Suspicious links should never be clicked on. And always remember that videos and sounds can be recorded by others, in some games directly, but also from team chat programs such as Discord. Before playing, always check the privacy settings of games and gaming platforms together with your children. This applies to consoles and also to platforms such as Steam, gog or similar providers. For games with in-game purchases, also check which payment details are stored.
Moreover, a very important hint: Always secure the game account, if possible, with two-factor authentication.
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