We Need More Teaching on Digital Security

For the second time this month, my wife received two messages where the sender offered some crazy opportunity to make money or asked her for financial help. She became suspicious of both messages.

The first message was a blatant fraud; the second drew her attention because it was not from a close contact.

I recommended that she try to contact these people in a way that she could verify whether they were really themselves, and ask them about the alleged messages. Both people said they did not know what those messages were about, then later on confirmed they had lost access to their Instagram accounts.

My wife asked me whether she could also be vulnerable to this kind of trouble, and my short answer was yes. I mean, I am starting from the premise that there is no one-hundred-percent safe system, nor can we be always careful. However, there are small precautions that we can take - in this case, having a good and unique password, in addition to MFA.

My question, after this short introduction, is to understand why, in an increasingly technological world, people, especially children and young people, are not taught about digital security.

Obviously, there are cases where no matter what we do, we cannot prevent a malicious actor, but there are other cases where we do not do the basics at least. And this can lead us to various losses, including financial.

This is an important reflection for us as a society, and especially for parents, like me, as responsible for the formation of children.