PEISeptember is right around the corner and that means a new school year for many Islanders. With that in mind, police are asking parents to talk to their kids about online safety.It’s a good time of year for parents to talk to their children about online safety, RCMP sayRyan McKellop · CBC News · Posted: Aug 30, 2025 12:34 PM EDT | Last Updated: 5 hours agoParents are being warned to limit personal information included in pictures and posts online, as they can be used by criminals. (PabloLagarto / Shutterstock)September is right around the corner and that means a new school year for many Islanders. With that in mind, police are asking parents to talk to their kids about online safety.Cpl. Gavin Moore, the media relations officer for the P.E.I. RCMP, said there’s one common custom parents should reconsider.”A common custom we see is that parents will post a picture of their children on their way to school, or perhaps on their front door just to mark that event,” he said.”Make sure that your security settings are set on strict high levels if you’re having a social media platform to not include names, date of births, identifiers like the civic number of the address, and really any information that could be harvested for criminal intent.”Moore said an important thing to think about before posting online is “would you want a criminal to have access to this type of information?”He said parents don’t have to stop doing it, but they need to keep security in mind.”You ultimately don’t want to advertise to the world that this young face, and this home are associated, just for any particular use that a criminal might use.”Even with security features activated on profiles, information posted can still be compromised.Information can be used for scams”Even when you have your security features on, one of your friends may have your account compromised and it could be a scammer who is leafing through people’s accounts looking for opportunities.”Cpl. Gavin Moore with the P.E.I. RCMP says parents should talk to their kids about online safety. (Laura Meader/CBC)Moore said information gathered on social media could be used by scammers or people with bad intentions.”Some of the information that they may use are things for identity theft, they may be targeting family members for grandparent scams. They can use these pieces of information to move forward their scams.”Moore said the grandparent scam is common, where a scammer will call a grandparent posing as a grandchild in trouble and asking for help. Information posted online can make this scam more believable.”If posted, and information about family dynamics are put in there, including who’s related to who, names, that type of information. This is all of value to scammers, and it may not be of value to scammers today, it may be years from now.”He said this is a time for Islanders to be celebrating an exciting time for their kids, but in a safe way. And this is a good time for parents to have a talk with their kids about online safety.”For small children, obviously the talks start small, so you want to talk about online privacy, About not talking to strangers. Should a young child be approached, they should contact a parent,” he said.”If someone wants to friend them on a social media platform, and of course let them know that not everybody online is who they say they are.”ABOUT THE AUTHORRyan McKellop is a graduate of the Holland College Journalism program and a web writer at CBC P.E.I.With files from Alex MacIsaac
Police offer tips about online safety with school set to resume
