Teaching Your Kids About Financial Cybersecurity

In an increasingly online world, it’s more important than ever to teach your children about protecting their personal information, especially their financial information. Being on the internet can create major risks to personal information. As soon as your children start using the internet, it’s important to be teaching them about online safety.

In this article, we cover a few tips we think might be helpful for parents teaching their children about financial cybersecurity.

Contact Arkansas Federal Credit Union (AFCU) today to talk to a financial professional for more information and resources. 

What Is Financial Cybersecurity?

Financial cybersecurity is protecting your sensitive financial information online, such as passwords and credit card or bank information. Practicing financial cybersecurity reduces your risk of being a victim of a cybercrime. 

Cybercrimes can happen in a variety of ways, but these are a few things you might notice that you should be suspicious of:

• Unfamiliar or unauthorized transactions or money movements
• Incorrect updates to account information
• Missing account statements or financial information
• Unfamiliar accounts on your credit report

As your children are starting to get online and learn about personal finances, you need to take some additional steps to teach them the basics of what to watch out for and how to protect their financial information. 

According to Deloitte, Gen Z is three times more likely to fall for an online scam than Boomers and far worse in using cyber protection measures than Millennials. In 2022, Gen Z lost over $210 million to online scams. As Gen Alpha starts to participate in online shopping, educating them early can help prevent them from falling for some common scams.

Teaching Kids About Financial Cybersecurity

It’s a good idea to start teaching your kids about online security and safety from a young age. Learning that password-protected information isn’t always necessarily private is an important lesson to teach your kids about strong passwords and keeping their personal information safe.

When teaching kids about safe online practices, it can be helpful to establish household practices for online security. Showing your children that you also follow the rules you’re teaching them allows you to teach by example and makes it more likely that your children will follow the rules.

Establishing clear routines and expectations of how to keep financial information secure can help your child start off on the right foot when interacting with online stores, social media sites, and more.

Financial Cybersecurity Tips

When teaching about financial cybersecurity and practicing it for yourself, these are some of the easy tips to help keep your financial information safe.

Be sure to use strong, unique passwords that are harder to guess or hack. Using strong passwords for bank and credit card accounts is especially important.

Using a password manager can help you keep your passwords unique. Password managers are a secure way to store your passwords. It’s safer than having a file with all your passwords, and if you aren’t trying to remember them, it’ll be easier to use strong and unique passwords.

Make sure to use antivirus software and keep it up-to-date and constantly running on your devices. Having this in the background can help keep your computer and your data safe. 

Protect your credit card and personal information. A lot of websites offer ways to store payment information in online accounts for easier checkouts. This can be unsafe because it’s another account that could get hacked and leave your personal information vulnerable.

Be wary of apps and other things you might download on your devices. It’s important not to download anything that seems suspicious or open links from people you don’t know. Teaching your kids to check with you before opening links from emails or downloading things is a good idea.

Stay vigilant when shopping online. There are a lot of ways to send money to people over the internet. It can be easy to send money to the wrong people or send money unintentionally. It’s important to be careful with electronic payments and sending money through more unconventional sources like Facebook or Venmo.

Learn More About Financial Cybersecurity

It’s important to stay secure with your finances and keep your personal information safe. Kids should start learning about online safety from a young age, and their learning about safety should start at home. 

Arkansas Federal has resources that can help you as you educate your kids about financial cybersecurity.
Visit Arkansas Federal today to learn more about financial cybersecurity.