Internet Safety Tips!

 Hey jammers! The internet is a mysterious, fun place. But you have to know how to navigate it. Below are some tips and tricks to help you have a fun and safe experience on the internet. 

*These tips are not only for Animal Jam; they are just tips in general for your personal use of the internet. 

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• Always keep personal information private - Whether you're in a chat room or on Animal Jam, never ever share your close, personal information. Even if it's with a super close online friend. This includes your age, home address, name, passwords, credit card numbers, and any other information that is personal and private. 
  
  
• Make strong passwords - As a lot of jammers saw in the Animal Jam Data Breach dilemma, hackers are made for the purpose of getting into personal and private information/data. Some hackers can even guess very weak passwords in less than 30 minutes. That's why it's always always always important for you to protect your privacy and information by creating strong, hard-to-crack passwords.  If you would like to learn more about creating a strong password, you can visit my Animal Jam Data Breach post for more in-depth tips and tricks! (Click on this link) 
  
  
• If it's sketchy, it's not catchy - (Sorry for that cringe rhyme) But if you get a weird or sketchy email, do not respond or acknowledge it. Just put it into your spam, or delete and ignore it! Hackers can easily send viruses and dangerous links to anyone's email. No matter what it is, as long as you remember the cringe rhyme, you'll be good to go :)
  
  
• Be careful what you post - This goes for practically every website and app on the internet. Think of the internet as an archive. It holds almost every post, picture, video, and comment that anyone has ever posted. Anything that gets posted on the internet stays on the internet. Deleting something will only make you and others not see it, but it can never be fully erased from view. 
  
  
• Never plan to meet someone online in real life - *shudders* This one is a more important one. Though this is a very important rule that should be followed on every website or chat room you visit, meeting people on Animal Jam I think would pass as ok. I think this was more of a trend on AJ around 2012-2015 or so?? You'd meet this very nice jammer in AJ, you'd eventually get to know them and set up some sort of call, and you would become friends! Yay! But has this become more of a danger? AJ is obviously a kid's game, with language filters and learning "stations" and shops. But in my opinion, older people really have started to take advantage of the game by hacking, scamming, tricking, and many other forms of lying about who they really are. The point of all of that being, you never know who the other person is on the other side of the screen. It could be some creepy, 40-year-old man sitting at a desk trying to get your information. You never know...

Have any more tips you don't see up here? Comment them below and I'll be sure to add them!

Thanks for reading and happy SAFE jamming!

~popcorn