TLaC: Safety Through Obscurity – Keeping Your Kids Safe…
I used to work as a network administrator for a very large insurance company. Now, net admins for insurance companies have a particularly stressful job due to something called HIPAA. I’m not going to get into the details of what that is because it’s boring as hell. The short of it: “If even the smallest bit of customer data gets leaked or stolen, we will end you. Signed, The Government.” Essentially, it was our job to protect our company from its own users. We were good at it too.
I had a particularly awesome manager as well. Once in awhile, he would walk into our area, staple a $20 to the poster board and say “social engineering time!” At that point, it was a contest to see who could get the most people in the call center to give up their login info or customer data by the end of the day using a set of guidelines (call from outside number, don’t say ____, etc etc). Basically, doing the things that any run of the mill hacker or identity thief would do. It was quality control. It was a test to see which of our call center people paid attention to that section in training that said “if you give out your login info or customer data to unauthorized/unverified people you will be fired on the spot with no warning.” You’d be surprised how many people didn’t pay attention to that. At the same time, there’s a reason I don’t have my insurance with that company.
Anyway, the thing I learned from my time there is that it doesn’t take much to convince someone you’re trustworthy. Often times, I could just take a quick trip to their MySpace page (Facebook wasn’t very popular yet at the time) while I was talking to them and I could glean enough info to convince them that I worked on the next floor up. Mentalists use similar techniques. You’d be surprised how much someone will tell you about themselves without realizing that they’ve told you. Even something as simple as a lucky guess on a personal detail can put the other person at ease enough to trust you with whatever info you want from them.
But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about today. I wanted to talk to you about keeping your children safe.
I constantly see these stickers that people put on the backs of their cars (almost always SUVs or Minivans). It’s a stick-figure diagram of that person’s family. I know you’ve seen them too. Have you ever really thought about them, though? Think about what they’re advertising to the world.
Let’s take a look at the example above. We can see that there are 4 members of the family plus 2 pets. The dad likes to build things, and the mother reads (or maybe works at a library?). The daughter plays soccer and the boy plays baseball. We don’t know the names of the parents but we do know the names of the kids and the pets. We also know the family’s last name.
Now imagine that some scumbag was watching a school and sees the young boy getting out of this car. The school day ends, he meets the kid leaving the school and says the following: “Hey, Peter! Your sister, Florence, was in a bad accident playing soccer and is at the hospital. Your dad asked me to check on Sebe and Tabby then pick you up and bring you to the hospital to meet them.”
Now imagine a kid’s thought process: “Well, I was always told not to talk to strangers but this guy knows my sister’s name and my pet’s names and my sister DOES play soccer. He must know our family pretty well!”
You’re probably sitting there thinking “my kid is smart enough to see through that”. I can tell you from my experience in IT that it has nothing to do with intelligence. Scams work on the brightest to the dimmest. It just depends on how convincing the scammer is and, believe me, they can be VERY convincing. If I were to have called up one of those customer service people with the equivalent amount of information above, I could get any information I needed from them with no problems at all. A kid isn’t going to fare much better. They still have an innocent and trusting view of the world.
So how do you protect them without destroying that innocent and trusting view of the world (before the world has the chance to do that for you)? For starters: scrape those damn stickers off your window. I know you’re proud of your family and you should be. Show that pride elsewhere. Even if you don’t have the names and hobbies on yours, enough information can be deduced from just a basic diagram. Do you really want to be saying “well, I know it makes it easier for someone to kidnap my child but I really like those stickers!”?
Also, and this is the big one, figure out a secret password. A word that you agree on as a family and that no one but your family would know. Something that wouldn’t be used in normal conversation but could be used as either an ok or a warning. If you ever do have to send someone to pick up your kid that your kid doesn’t know, tell them the password. Even police officers can convey the password. That way, your kid will know for sure that the person is legit. Instruct them never to go with someone that doesn’t know the password.
At the same time, if something is wrong, they should be taught that if you work it into a conversation in a specific way, it is a warning and they should run and call the police.
Ultimately, the concept of “stranger danger” is a good thing to teach. That concept falls apart when said stranger is really good at convincing people he’s not a stranger. Keeping your kids safe is a monumentally difficult task. Don’t make it easier for someone to endanger them.
Top image used under Creative Commons License from cometstarmoon.
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