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Mona Abu Hammour
Amman- The surprise was when she received a phone call from one of her friends telling her that several family photos and videos of her had been shared on a social networking site through her son.
It was not easy for Saeda, who was surprised that her child had access to the contents of her phone, such as photos and videos, after he downloaded a game application.
This game, according to Saeda, requests permission to access the phone’s camera and photos, and because her child does not know how dangerous this is, he has agreed to all the terms, and what is important for him is to start playing.
It is not only prevalent who has been exposed to access to her data and the content of her phone because of the applications that her children download on the device, such as games and social networking sites. The ignorance of many users of smart applications how to deal with their conditions before downloading them, pushes to allow data, information and locations without awareness or awareness.
According to the survey of the use and prevalence of communications and information technology in homes 2017, issued by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in cooperation with the Department of Statistics, the percentage of individuals aged 5 years and over, according to the survey of the use and spread of communications and information technology in homes, in cooperation with the Department of Statistics, is about 65%, males constitute 53% and females 47%, noting that 61% of individuals They use the Internet via smartphones, 33% using computers, and 3.7% using tablets.
By converting the percentages into figures according to the population of the year 2017, which amounted to 10,053 million people, the number of people aged 5 years and over is 8.9 million, including 4.168 million females. Of these, 5.8 million people use the Internet, of whom 2.7 million are female.
The number of children aged 5-18 years reached 3.3 million children, including 1.6 million girls, while the number of children using the Internet reached 2.1 million children, including 1 million girls.
During the past two weeks, the Jordanian Telecommunications Regulatory Authority published several awareness messages directed to parents about the use of smart applications and phones by teenagers and children.
These messages addressed to parents warn against some applications on mobile phones that rely primarily on the circulation of videos that may contain inappropriate content.
The authority also called on parents to monitor their children and urged them not to use some electronic applications that allow creating and circulating videos; These applications spread these videos widely without the user's knowledge, which may sometimes contain videos that are inappropriate for teenagers and minors and may expose them to danger.
Through these messages, the authority indicated that there are many applications that are available on the app store platforms to protect and monitor children while they are using their mobile phones.
These applications, according to the authority, provide different features that vary depending on the type of application, as it works to give parents the ability to supervise and protect children through many options, including blocking websites that are inappropriate for children and the ability to control the duration of children's use of the device and the times allowed for use, as well as preventing some of them. Locate your child.
For his part, the educator, Dr. Ayesh Al-Nawaisah, points out the need to pay attention to the seriousness of this matter, which is directly related to information security, pointing out that many of the issues that social media circulate as a result of data and privacy breaches.
The danger of the applications, according to Al-Nawaisah, is that each time it asks users to allow access to the data, information, photos and videos contained in the phone or tablet.
Parents and children users of these applications must be aware and aware of international ethics and legislation related to the regulation of these applications and issues related to the protection and privacy of individuals.
Al-Nawaisah points out that international conventions and covenants guarantee privacy for individuals even in national constitutions as well, pointing out that privacy penetration and access to user data of some applications have become important global issues.
"All applications, when downloaded, ask to be allowed to access the phone's data, and this is an issue that must be taken care of," Al-Nawaisah says.
And he continues, “The risk increases when the user of the application hurries and agrees to each item of the application, and thus agrees to access personal data in all its forms, even issues related to personal secrets, bank accounts, commercial issues and other matters that the owner of the phone keeps after allowing access to his data.”
Al-Nawaisah points out the need to address this issue on two levels. The first international through legislation that regulates this process and protects individuals, and at the family level, parents’ awareness of how to use these applications and read the terms and conditions of any application to know how to use and protect data from penetration.
Al-Nawaisah notes that many parents link their children's phones and tablets to their accounts and e-mail, in order to monitor them, but this often led to the breach of some parents' data due to applications that the children downloaded and allowed them to access data and computers as well.
Parents, according to Al-Nawaisah, should educate their children regarding the protection of personal data, so that they know, for example, what personal and family photos and videos can be sent to friends, and because children are ignorant of a lot about the risks of sharing their personal information, they must be warned of the consequences, especially since a lot of data is difficult to delete after Post it or send it to someone else.
Al-Nawaisah believes that the need today has become urgent to talk about this matter at the media levels on the one hand, through campaigns to raise parents' awareness of the dangers of their evidence, as well as educating children and not sharing their account addresses, on the other hand, at the educational level through schools.
In addition, according to German experts, according to Mittel Deutsche Rundfunk, children should be warned against in-app purchases, especially games, and parents should be agreed not to download or purchase anything over the phone except after consulting with them.
In order to raise children to take responsibility, experts recommend that children should be involved in paying the costs of the “tariff” in order to assess the value of things, such as paying for some applications or games through pocket money. This may prompt children to think carefully about purchasing the application or dispensing with it.
The German initiative recommended the use of the Internet in all its forms, only half an hour for children up to 5 years, and a full hour for children between 6 and 9 years, and weekly times for using the media can be set at ten, so that children learn to deal with the resources available to them.
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