The first aspects of online computer technology were introduced in the 1990s. While celebrating these interesting inventions, who expected it to take such a dark turn?

“People didn’t know it was an issue then because there wasn’t a whole lot of, like, tracking going on,” computer science teacher Dan Parkison said.“But you see it become more of an issue when you start doing, like, online purchases, things like that.”

Parkison has been a computer science teacher for 31 years, but he is always learning from his students.

“My generation, we didn’t grow up with [computers],” Parkison said. “There is a term called Digital Native and Digital Immigrant, Digital Natives are people who have grown up with iPads. Immigrants are people like me who grew up without having anything and just trying to figure out how this thing worked.”

There’s more to being safe online than age. Seniors are more likely to struggle with financial and identity theft, while minors are endangered by older people online.

“The person on the other side isn’t always who they claim to be, you know,” said Parkison. “So kind of be mindful of that, you know, I know some of that, like the online gaming and stuff like that. You’re not always going to know the other person.”

No matter the age, susceptibility, or knowledge of computers, there’s still a chance that an online criminal will come for you. In that case, you need to know how to protect yourself.

“If you put in a password [such as] your first name and your last name and a number,” tech security specialist Sean Glomb said, “that’s not really great. It should be more complex than that, so I think having more complex passwords is a really easy way to also help protect yourself. But then again, just because you go to a website and it says, ‘Hey, we need your information to do this,’ doesn’t mean you should.”

Even kids games like Roblox can be dangerous. There are multiple accounts of children being groomed on this game, or similar apps. This First Alert 6 article goes further into a case.

“All my kids are in this generation, and both my daughters like to share online, and sometimes that’s too much, but we’re seeing a lot of crimes of easy opportunity too,” Glomb said.

The internet is always evolving, becoming bigger and scarier. There are so many cases of grooming, identity theft, credit card fraud, and much more that stem from the internet.

“I think one of the big things is a lot of people don’t know what’s out there as far as life,” said Parkison.