Whanganui experts share advice to mark Netsafety Week

Terry Dowdeswell (right) says older people are generally pretty anxious about getting "fleeced" online. Photo / Bevan Conley

Educating everyone in the community on how to stay safe online is the aim of this year's Netsafety Week.

Netsafe chief executive Brent Carey said its research showed an increase of more than 25 per cent in harmful content reports over the last two years, with Māori, women and children being targeted the most.

Examples included online bullying and harassment.

"Everyone is at risk of being targeted which makes online safety more important than ever," Carey said.

SeniorNet Whanganui chairman Terry Dowdeswell said getting people to be safe on the internet was "part and parcel" of getting them to use it.

His organisation aims to help older people get up to speed with the latest internet technology.

"Generally, older people will be quite anxious about making sure they don't get fleeced in some way," Dowdeswell said.

"Yes, the internet can be a dangerous place, but if people come to us before they go poking around, we can give them guidelines around managing and avoiding things."

There were measures you could put in place to protect your whole family, Technoman compute repair shop owner Francois Izatt said.

"If you've got young kids in the house there are things like parental control features that you can enable.

"Providers such as Spark, Vodafone and Inspire Net all have this. With Spark you can enable it through the modem or by talking to them directly."

That could be useful when the children knew more about technology than the parents, Izatt said.

Apps such as Google Family Link and Microsoft Family Safety were also available.

Technoman owner Francois Izatt. Photo / Supplied

Simply using common sense while on the internet could save a lot of stress, like sticking to legitimate streaming sites such as Netflix.

"If things look too good to be true it most likely is too good to be true, and if a website doesn't look quite right or it's asking you for money, don't use it," Izatt said.

"Everybody has a family member who will tell them to go to 123movies.com or whatever, but if you don't [have an] antivirus programme you will get pop-ups all over the place."

Izatt recommended Malwarebytes and ESET NOD32 as good antivirus programmes.

Dowdeswell said when people of any age bought a new phone, the company selling it didn't usually put a lot of emphasis on making sure they could use it safely.

That could be especially dangerous for older people.

"There should be a duty of care there, just like there is for selling alcohol.

"You don't sell a bunch of alcohol to minors and let them go for it. Likewise, you shouldn't sell a phone to a senior without instructions on where they can get safety from."

It was very easy to go down rabbit holes on the internet, many of which contained "out-and-out-lies", Dowdeswell said.

"Someone can get to Twitter or Facebook and 'like' things, but what they don't realise is by liking it they'll get more of it.

"It starts reinforcing itself, with machines trolling what you're doing and feeding you more untrustworthy stuff."

Pride Whanganui trustee Christina Emery said Netsafe was available seven days a week if someone needed advice, support or to report something.

Pride Whanganui trustee Christina Emery. Photo / Bevan Conley

Online abuse was particularly prolific for young people in the rainbow community.

"During Pride Week we get a lot of negative chatter, and obviously my biggest advice is to ignore it," Emery said.

"What I can do is monitor the comments and immediately delete and block if it's something horrendous. Any abuse of any kind just gets shut down straight away."

It got harder when Pride posts were shared to community Facebook pages where Emery had no control over the comments.

"My rule of thumb is to never engage, although I have broken that rule twice and I'm glad I did, to stand up for the community."

Online support for the Whanganui rainbow community from outside it had increased in recent years, meaning she didn't have to jump in as much as days gone by, Emery said.

"As much as I delete and get rid of things, you still need to be able to showcase these d***heads.

"I always tell young people that those who spread hate online are cowards. Nine times out of 10 they wouldn't say it to your face and they wouldn't have a conversation with you.

"They hide behind a screen and a keyboard instead."

Like Dowdeswell, Age Concern Whanganui manager Michelle Malcolm said her organisation was available to help when it came to online safety, whether that be abuse or scamming.

Cyber bullying could be "horrific", and for older people it wouldn't have been something they had to deal with in their generation, Malcolm said.

"We are actually starting up our free tech classes again this week, with students from Whanganui City College volunteering to help us out.

"That's around using our phones, but we'll also be talking about keeping safe when you're on devices.

"Our classes are intergenerational and absolutely brilliant, it's older students and younger students working together."

The first point Netsafe always made was not to reply to something straight away, Emery said.

"If it's an emotive thing and in the moment, all you want to do is attack.

"Step away from it and talk to someone you can trust."

Emery said taking screenshots of personal online attacks would be needed as evidence.