Advanced Persistent Teens

from here and here

So I had kind of gotten the impression that the age of children being a significant online threat was a thing of the past. With all the talk about the commercialization and professionalization of the threat landscape I thought that meant the kids in the past had grown up and professionalized while the next generation of kids did something else entirely. Apparently I was wrong. Kids are apparently still a significant part of the threat landscape.

I guess I really shouldn't be surprised, though. All the intellectual and social rewards that drew kids to it in the past are still there now, and now there's the addition of financial rewards too. There's little reason for the next generation of kids to go elsewhere when what they want is right there.

And everybody elses

from here

I actually have zero difficulty imagining Mark Zuckerberg as a helicopter parent. Just look at how much his company spies on complete strangers. So the idea that Facebook wanted to target children around the same age as Zuckerberg's oldest makes it difficult not to see a possible connection between the two.

Get 'em accustomed to surveillance while they're young

found on Izismile

Actually, don't do this. Don't make your children numb to surveillance and privacy invasion. The privacy landscape is in bad enough shape as it is.

Never underestimate your adversary

from here and here (image source)

The think about knowing your enemy is that you need to know them well enough to know what they're capable of. Now, I'm not saying that your kid is the enemy, but if you knew they were this strong you probably wouldn't waste your money on that childproof lock.

For the kids who were only warned about free candy

found on Acid Cow

The admonition about not taking candy from strangers always struck me as oddly specific. What if the stranger had something healthy like an apple instead? Was that somehow OK? What if they had a snack platter with all sorts of different things? Were we only supposed to avoid the candy and take the chips instead?

Especially since this was advice for children, it seems unreasonable to expect them to extrapolate from one specific piece of advice and apply it in a bunch of other similar but different scenarios as well - but perhaps parents didn't anticipate predators would adapt.

Guess they won't be playing cops and robbers in Kansas

from here (image source one and two)

It's hard to take authorities seriously when they arrest little girls for a hand gesture we've all made (probably on multiple occasions).

Pay no attention to those people behind the curtain

from here (image source one and two)

There are so many things listening to us these days, and apparently your kids' Xbox is one of them. That means you have to ask yourself, whether or not you're OK with devices sending your own conversations to unseen people for human review, are you really OK with that happening to your kids? And are you OK with it being done by a company so cavalier about that privacy violation that they don't even bother to adjust their practices to avoid bad PR?

My Little Spy: Surveillance Is Magic

found on Memebase

How early are we training kids to accept being spied on?