Last week, my son came home from school very upset about being accused of writing an inappropriate comment on his classroom’s blog. I received an email from his teacher describing the same scenario that my son described. After a few back-and-forth emails with his teacher, I was able to prove to her that he didn’t write the comment. It’s good when the mom has the tech-savviness to ask for screen prints of the comment, the date and time stamp, and the IP address of where the comment was sent from. After going over the information with his teacher, we both agreed that there was no way my son had written the comment. Phew!
It was a learning moment. Even at the elementary level, it’s important for students to have unique passwords that are different from year to year. Students need to understand the importance of not sharing their passwords with others. My son was awfully proud of himself a few days later when he came home and told me that no one would ever “crack his new password.” His teacher had the students create new passwords with a convention similar to a favorite animal and birthday. Well, my son was determined to pick something for his password that no one would ever guess; something that simply wasn’t true. When my husband and I saw his teacher at parent-teacher conferences, she laughed when talking about the password situation. She said that she thought our son was up to something when she saw that his new password was akin to sloth92, clearly not a typical favorite animal and not a possible birthday. This wasn’t the actual password convention she used, but it was similar enough to be used for an example. I’m not actually sharing out my son’s password!
Want more on password safety? Take a look at these links: