FAQ

Quick answers to common questions

How to prevent a person with cognitive disabilities from being a victim of cyberbullying?

• Monitor their online relationships as much as possible
• Build trust with the person so that he/she shares his/her experiences and exchanges online.
• Activate parental controls on the devices the person uses.
• Watch out for signs of harassment.
• Explain, through games, the difference between a physical relationship and an online relationship as well as the difference between public and private content.
• For learning dynamics:
  • We must be aware that our users, our patients and our children can be victims but they can also be aggressors or accomplices of the aggressors.
  • In bullying, doing nothing is being an accomplice. Supporting the aggressor even with an innocent "like" is being a necessary accomplice.

Banning Internet access to these persons is not the solution. We will be depriving them of a good way of socialization and personal growth. Moreover, they will try to connect to the Internet at the slightest opportunity and they will do it in secret.

What are the symptoms of online cyberbullying?

• Voluntary isolation
• Apathy
• Anxiety
• Anguish
• Mood swings
• Drops in school or work performance
• Social phobia
• Depression and suicidal ideation

How to respond to a cyberbullying situation?

• Never, not even in the form of a denunciation, should we spread messages of hate or harassment . Spreading a message to show disapproval does not help, it only makes the content even more viral.
• Never respond: Neither the victim nor the supporters should respond to the aggressors, even if it goes against our most basic instinct. Any response, of any kind, will feed the aggressor and only provoke more violence.
• Adequate care for victims: They need psychological, technical, legal and in some cases ediation support with the family.
• Establishment of an action protocol for harassment cases and a clear chain of communications and alerts.

Do you know what grooming is?

• Is the situation in which an adult sexually harasses a minor by telematic means.
• The perpetrators of this crime create false profiles on a social network, chat room, forum, video game or other, where they pose as a minor and establish a relationship of trust with the child.
• Usually consists of deceiving him or her with a false crush and requesting intimate photos. These photos are then used to blackmail the victim into publishing them if he/she does not provide more images or, in the worst case, if he/she does not agree to a physical encounter.
• Deception can last for months before materialising into abuse.
• The criminal tries by all means to keep it secret.

How to prevent grooming?

• Prohibiting potential victims from talking to strangers on the Internet will not help, as they will do so at the slightest opportunity.
• Professionals and family members should incorporate digital culture into everyday conversation, so that boys and girls find it easy to talk about the subject and also learn to be cautious.
• The ideal situation is for a family member or professional to be trusted enough so that the potential victim would be able to tell him or her about the people he or she communicates with over the Internet.
• Family members and professionals must remain vigilant. Although it may seem unlikely, any disabled person is vulnerable to grooming.

How to react to grooming?

• Reactive measures are similar to cyberbullying.
• In this particular case, it is advisable to go to the police as soon as possible.
• In this type of crime, the public prosecutor's office acts ex officio.

What is "data capture"?

• It is the storage and processing of our online behavior by Internet service providers.

• The information captured and processed includes our searches, readings, schedules and connection times, purchases, cultural consumption, news readings, hobbies and groups to which we belong online.

• The algorithms created by large technology companies to exploit this information even allow them to predict our behavior, which enables them to manipulate us by personalizing the information or search results they offer us.

What is profiling in online marketing?

• Thanks to data capture, data processors (especially large technology companies) are able to analyze our consumer profile, which may include: tastes, hobbies, purchasing power, political ideology, level of online interaction, connection schedules, connection time, type of news I consume, and much more.

• This allows them to trade with our profiles so that these same companies and others can offer us products suited to our profile.

• This also allows them to offer us "personalized" results in our searches on the network.

• Profiling is not 100% accurate, but since it is based on Artificial Intelligences that process a massive amount of data, it can predict with a high degree of certainty our behavior and therefore manipulate it.

If I have nothing to hide, why should I be concerned about the capture of my data?

The real goal of the big platforms and social networks is to keep us connected as long as possible. To do this, they use the information they have about us (our profile) to get our attention, often in a dishonest way.

What is phishing?

• "Phishing" is a type of fraud carried out by telematic means that consists in the impersonation, by the criminal, of the digital identity of a company, organization or administration in order to obtain the victim's passwords that allow access to his or her bank account.
• It has many variations and is the most common form of online scam.

How does phishing work?

• The criminal sends an email, sms or Whatsapp message impersonating your bank.
• The message says there is a problem related to the victim's account: it is overdrawn, there is a bill that could not be processed…
• It urges the victim to click on a link quickly to solve a problem that may cost him money or even legal problems.
• The link in question leads to a fake page (also an imitation of the website of the impersonated bank or organization) where the victim will be asked to enter his secret online banking identification data (login, password, pin) or card data (card number, security pin, expiration date, etc.).
• Once these data are entered on the fake page, the criminal will use them to enter the victim's online banking data and steal the money from the victim's bank account or card.

Phishing only comes through email?

No, phishing can come through sms (Smishing), whatsapp messages and even phone calls (vishing).

How to detect and avoid phishing?

• By knowing how it works and identifying the modus operandi

• By knowing that our bank (electricity company, telephone operator, etc.) will never ask us for our secret codes or card pin number by email or telephone

• Sometimes the text of the message is poorly translated. If the language is strange or has bad syntax, be suspicious.

• If you receive it by email, paying attention to the address: it will be very similar but never the same as the original.

  • Example:

    Real email adress: m.garcia@deutsche-bank.com Fake email adress: m.garcia@deutchshe-bank.com

• If you click on the link, the fake web page

  • does not start with https:// but with http:// (without 's')

  • does not have a drawing of a lock on the left of the URL

  • Like the email, the website address will be similar but never the same.

    • Example:

      Real URL: https://deutsche-bank.com Fake URL: https://deutchshe-bank.com

How to avoid being a victim of misinformation?

• Don't trust news from an unknown source that arrives via email or whatsapp, even when a friend sends it.
• If it is surprising news that someone is supposedly trying to hide, so that the truth is not known, be suspicious.
• Search the internet for information on the topic of the news item and compare.
• If the suspicious story is on a news channel or newspaper, you can search for different facts to verify its veracity:
  • date
  • who the author is (is it a journalist or a businessman)
  • where the information comes from, who the sources are
  • who is the editor of the media
  • who is the owner
• In recent years, many journalists have set up news verification services. You can write to them and ask