Online scams and your kids: start with parental controls

A concerned mother comforts her distressed teenage daughter, symbolizing the emotional toll of online risks and the importance of digital safety for families.

Mastering parental controls, with the help of Digital Parenting Pro, is one of the first steps you can take to better protect your kids against online fraudsters.

The Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA) reports that over $1.03 trillion was lost to scammers in 2024. With scammers using sophisticated techniques (from AI voice cloning and deepfake videos to malicious QR codes) in their attempts to trick us, children are increasingly falling for these nasty online tricks.

So we’re pleased to see that the theme for Safer Internet Day 2025 was ‘Too good to be true? Protecting yourself and others from scams online’. Thousands of children up and down the country, and across the globe, came together to discover how to spot and avoid scams.

Parents are far from powerless to help their kids as, despite how it might seem otherwise, it is possible to spot online scams and defend against them.

Online fraud and your kids: How parental controls can help

While they are no substitute for educating your children about the risks and rewards of using technology, and then regularly talking to them about their online lives, parental controls are still useful. They give parents the ability to put limits on what their child can do and see when they’re using their screens. This can help protect them from some online scams.

For example, parental controls can be used to restrict in-app purchases – a potential lifeline if a child has been tricked into making an unauthorised purchase on an app or game. They can also be used to restrict access to some inappropriate websites, making it less likely kids will be tricked into clicking/tapping on fake offers.

How to find out which parental controls are available on your apps, games and devices

We’ve also been keeping a close eye on some of the most popular apps and games in recent weeks to see what parental controls are available on them.

The buzz around season two of Netflix hit Squid Game propelled the popularity of its tie-in game Squid Game: Unleashed. Meanwhile Meta’s newest social media app Threads has remained a firm favourite among all age groups. Many concerned parents have also been asking us about Stars, a popular messaging app aimed at children and families. While some of these apps may have been created with children in mind, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are protected from scams when they’re using them. However, there are a number of parental controls features that parents can reach for to help protect them from these risks. All of which, and much more, can be found on Digital Parenting Pro – one of the biggest parental controls and safety settings resources in the UK.

We developed this interactive resource in partnership with Vodafone to provide helpful information about the parental controls and safety settings available across the most popular apps, games and devices.

Becoming a Digital Parenting Pro

If, like many parents, you don’t know a ‘PEGI rating’ from a ‘privacy setting’ or what terms like ‘end-to-end encryption’ actually mean, we’ve also created a Parental Controls and Safety Settings guide alongside Digital Parenting Pro. This guide not only provides jargon busters about parental controls, but also helpful conversation starters so parents can support their children to use technology safely.

There’s no better day than today to have these conversations with our children.

Source: https://www.vodafone.co.uk/newscentre/smart-living/digital-parenting/online-scams-and-your-kids-start-with-parental-controls/