iPhone Tip & Safe guard your child's Identity Online!

iPhone
For all iPhone users, we have been bombarded lately with operating system updates and a new 4S model, the operating system on the iPhone is the software that runs the phone and is known as IOS, currently we are at IOS 5.1. If you have an iPhone 3GS, 4, or 4S they are all capable of running the new IOS 5 software and should have been receiving message pop ups that advise you that new updates are available. Before you can install IOS 5 onto an iPhone 3GS or 4, you must have the latest I tunes update running on your pc, a 4S will come with IOS 5 already installed. It is common to get a message when you try to update the phone that it will take hours to update, if you get this message just cancel and try again until you get a message that says a time of around 25 minutes or so.


One handy little feature that not many are aware of when using a phone on IOS5 is that you can use the "volume up" button on the side of the phone to take a picture instead of having to tap the screen. If you are holding the phone on its side it feels like a real camera with its shutter button at the top, and If you 
have a set of  earplugs with a volume control on them, you may use that volume button as well, sort of like a remote control. My daughters actually find this feature a bit creepy!. Next time I will tell you how you can tweet via speech on your iPhone, and how to have SIRI like functions on an iPhone 3GS or 4.


Children's Identity
We are all aware of the dangers of having our personal information online and identity theft. One area that is being overlooked is our young children, Quite often proud mums and dads will post up their child's birthday celebrations and don't really think twice about listing the exact day and the age of "Kirsty Smith". 


I realize  this sounds really paranoid and over the top but the fact is: there are people out there who are known to be "warehousing" personal data, this means that they are storing all the personal information like this that they come across and when these children turn 18 this information then  becomes a valuable commodity.


During our early years there are lots of experiences that require us to give our name and date of birth, we do this in good faith that our information will be treated with the respect that it deserves. This is different to putting details "out there" in social networking, which we all know can be a minefield for privacy intrusion.


Suggestions of things you can do to help protect your child, are: always refer to them online by a nick name, you may also just mention your child is having a birthday and not state what age they are, and lastly put the post up a day either side of the birthday, or change it from year to year so that the no one can actually pin down a date. Remember "Be Alert and Beware Online"