What is VPN?
Virtual private networks allow users to access other websites or apps securely between your system and other networks. The initial thought of creating VPN apps was to establish a guarded network for business connectivity. But nowadays, teenagers are using it mostly for purposes that are stated as “illegal.”
How VPN Works?
VPN apps send your data or browsing history to the connected VPN servers. These servers then encrypt the data and route it to the requested website or apps.
When To Use VPN?
Using a VPN is only beneficial if you are using it on public Wi-Fi.
- If anyone tries to nose into your work, they will get gibberish encrypted data.
- VPN prevents your location from disclosing it to the visited sites. As it sends the whereabouts of the VPN server, you are connected to.
Breach Of Privacy By VPN:
The VPN apps are not dumb; they ask your permission to access your entire data before you start using them.
- VPN apps can track your online activities, including the keys you type. It can be a serious threat to your private data like banking passwords etc.
- Expect that the VPN app you are using is selling your information to third parties for advertising purposes. That means you are not “secure enough” using those apps.
What Do Teen Think About VPN?
Teens are naturally better at the internet as we call it their second nature. Nevertheless, they are prone to hide their online conduct from their parents. In a shocking report published by CNN business, 70 percent of teens hide their online activities from their parents or guardians. And this ratio has increased by 45 percent compared to the survey conducted in 2010.
Why Teens Are Hiding And How?
Teens stow away their online presence from others, including their parents. And with the figures mentioned below, make the parents think if they are following the correct precautionary measures to look into the real show. Teens are hiding their activities in the following ways:
- 53 percent of teens clear their browsing history frequently.
- 34 percent feel the need to delete their instant messages or multimedia files from their devices.
- 20 percent of youth limit their privacy to “friends only.”
- 20 percent of teens use Incognito modes in browser settings.
What Are Some Facts?
Before going forward with the topic, let us share some facts and figures. Teens are using VPNs for the below-mentioned motives:
- 43 percent of teenagers use VPN to access violent content online.
- 32 percent of teens use it to access pornography.
- Total 15 percent use it to hack the social networks out of them, 9 percent hacked the emails.
- 16 percent used the VPN in their phones to cheat at school tests.
How To Check If Your Child Using Bypassing Techniques?
Kids today are raised in the digital era. As a result, they are better at evolving technologies. Some parents can set up parental controls on their home internet network. But that is not enough!
Teenagers know how to break the chains and can easily bypass your network settings, going unnoticed. There are the following ways they are breaching your networking chains:
1. Through Bypassing Proxy:
Your child may be bypassing the proxy settings you chose for your home network. They use a web proxy to hide their IP address. If you have tagged certain websites and blocked them, there are plenty of websites offering proxy bypassing through which your child can enter those websites using their servers. It will leave no trail of web history in the browser.
Solution:
You can see a proxy website in the browsing history if you have installed an Android monitoring app on your teen’s device. You can monitor for the websites that contain “proxy” in their URLs.
2. VPNs:
Like the web proxy sites, VPN is an app installed on the phone or computer that redirects using an external server. Thus, enabling your child to enter forbidden websites easily without being traced.
Solution:
VPN is hard to detect in a network as the router cannot detect the IP, and broadband providers will not be able to check the browsing history. However, with the help of an app to monitor Android phone, you can check if your child has installed any VPN app on the mobile phone. The application monitoring features of some reliable Android monitoring apps enable parents to monitor and give them an edge over their tech-savvy children.
3. Bypassing DNS:
Domain Name System is like a phone directory where all the addresses to the domains are stored. Adolescents can use the public IP of any unauthorized website and access them using public DNS servers or installing routers.
Solution:
Parents need to secure the passwords of their systems and constantly check the DNS reports of their system. Good Android spyware can help you get detailed reports of the usage of applications.
4. Incognito Mode:
Kids use private browsing modes, like incognito modes, in their web browsers to hide their browsing history all the time. Parents need to stay in-the-know zones of their kids’ online activities. And these private modes allow kids to throw their parents off of their history.
Solution:
Your child may not know that these browsing modes are not as private as they think they are. It is because the add-ons and plugins are storing the relative information behind. If you have installed an Android monitoring app on your child’s mobile, the blocked sites will still be off-limits. In addition to that, reports generated about search history will raise red flags for you to monitor.
5. Image Searching:
Children are smart, and they know how to dodge the security system. You should know that the websites you have blocked on your child’s mobile phones are accessible via Google image searches. It happens as pictures are tagged as HTML markups, and they can’t block them just by typing the names of websites.
Solution:
Parents are highly recommended to install an app to monitor Android phone to track the browsed images in the images section.
6. Video Games:
Apart from traditional web searches, there are other ways to access the banned material. Such ways include the use of video games and apps. They allow you to surf the internet without being tracked and can access almost all unfiltered web content.
Solution:
Android spyware installed on your kids’ device can let you know which apps are frequently used by your child, and you can do spot-checking while they are using them.
What Are The Threats Related To VPN?
- When children use VPN, they often access restricted sites, and those sites are unhealthy for children and contain malware and malvertising content. Your device or your network may become its victim before you even know it.
- VPNs allow the government, employers, and advertising agencies to access the search history, personal information like passwords, and location of the person using them.
- There is a chance of IP leaks while you are using VPN. It means that VPN providers can retrieve the searches, clicks, and number of visits using your device’s IP address.
- DNS leaks can occur even using VPNs. It means that your browsing history, network IP, and device are viewable by the websites.
EndNote:
Kids can outsmart their parents in unimaginable ways, but with the help of the best Android monitoring apps, like TheWiSpy, parents can minimize the prone dangers to their child due to VPN. Parents should set up a good value system in their kids and teach them about their responsibilities while using the internet. Unsupervised internet can damage your child and even scar them for life.
What are VPN Apps? Why Teens are Using VPN Too Much?,
Kate Bonner
Feb 09. 2022
parent should take care of kids social activities. that article is full of information about kids.