By Hilda Nyakwaka |
iHub’s Online Safety Fair is back! The second edition will be on 14th December 2019. As we wrap up the year, we would like to explore the various ways in which emerging technologies seep into our everyday lives and how we can still protect ourselves. The event is geared towards engaging with our younger citizens who are online and providing a space to explore and even experience ways to stay online practically.
Every day there is a new form of technology that emerges and which aims to make a task in our daily lives slightly easier to manage. We can now purchase products from all our favourite online stores from the comfort of our beds, we can pay for our drivers’ licences from our phones and get the renewal generated right there and then. Keeping in touch with our loved ones and receiving urgent news has never been easier and cheaper. Now when the little ones come to visit, we are not too concerned on how to keep them occupied, we have a million games on our phones that they could play. Pretty much solves the problem, right? Not quite.
Everyone irrespective of their age, can be entrapped in the darker parts of the interwebs; when you make these online purchases and as the kids use your phones to play all the games in the world that they could find on the app store, do you know the terms and conditions of using these sites and apps? Are the games asking kids weird questions that a kid should not be answering? How much does your smart watch actually know about you? What do these companies do with all the information they collect from you?
These are just some of the questions we will be aiming to answer through the interactive and hands-on sessions we will have running throughout the day. Additionally, we will have some resources that the attendees could carry home, including an online safety card and a data detox kit, that they can refer to as they continue to learn how to remain authentic and protect themselves while they navigate online spaces.