August 2025

Family Cyber Safety

*download our free Child Safety Checklist​

How safe are your children online?

If you're a parent like me, this question haunts you. There are too many threats coming from too many places, and yet there has to be things that we can do to protect our kids. Here's what I've learned:

​7 Security Habits to Teach your Kids NOW​

Go Deeper: There's a lot more that can be said about this subject, and I might do more videos in the future. Next week, for example, I'm doing a live stream with the Family Tech channel talking all about family safety and security. Be sure to join me!

Family Tech Live! Join me this Tuesday evening, August 19th to discuss family security & privacy. ​Check the Live Time →​

Prevent Identity Theft Learn how you can take simple steps to stop identity theft for you and your kids. ​Watch the Tutorial →​

Kids keep getting older

Hi [CORRECTED_NAME GOES HERE], it's finally happened - my kid is begging me for his own smartphone. I dreaded this day and now I can't avoid it anymore.

Don't get me wrong - he's not getting one, even though he's 13 years old. I know I'm probably in the minority here, but he's just fine with the dumb phone I gave him and I don't think he's ready to handle the challenge of addictive smart phones.

But this has brought my wife and I to a place where we've had to discuss a lot of new things such as:

• How much YouTube? Should he be restricted to YouTube Kids only?
• Email & Communication: We want him to be able to communicate with family and friends, but how much do we monitor this?
• Screen Time Limits? The age old question of how much time we allow him to be on screens.

If you've been through this before, I welcome any tips!

For the rest of you, you're welcome to look over my should as I learn about this by reading a lot and asking questions.

That's what I'll be doing with Sarah Kimmel of the Family Tech channel later this week during the live stream. Come by and ask your own questions!

This Week in Privacy News

​Columbia University Privacy Disaster​

An unknown hacker has stolen the sensitive personal, financial and health information of nearly 870,000 people in a major data breach at Columbia University.

--> Tomsguide.com/computing/online-security/almost-900-000-students-and-alumni-hit-in-major-college-data-breach-financial-aid-info-social-security-numbers-and-more-exposed

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​​Those Sneaky Data Brokers!​

Data brokers don't want you to make opt-out requests, so they've been caught hiding their opt-out pages from Google search results, making it even harder for us as consumers.

--> Wired.com/story/data-brokers-hiding-opt-out-pages-google-search/
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​Welcome ChatGPT 5! (watch out)​

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a jailbreak technique to bypass ethical guardrails erected by OpenAI in its latest large language model (LLM) GPT-5 and produce illicit instructions.

--> Thehackernews.com/2025/08/researchers-uncover-gpt-5-jailbreak-and.html

1 in 50?

By the way, the subject line of this email is a reference to the fact that 1 in 50 kids will have their identity stolen before they turn 18.

Let that sink in. It's a pretty sobering statistic when you understand just how much this can set a young adult back before they even get started.

I hope you've learned something!

✌️

Josh

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3824 Cedar Springs Rd #801-8170, Dallas, TX 75219
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