A woman from Coimbatore rural approached the Cyber Cell of the Coimbatore District (Rural) Police two months ago after she found that around ₹ 30,000 was missing from her bank account without her knowledge.
Though she had approached the Cyber Cell seeking an investigation into the loss of money, she returned home in shock after coming to know that it was her son studying in class X who had spent the money for online games.
Officials at the Cyber Cell found out that the boy had been playing different games on the mobile which was given to him for online classes and he used the parent’s bank account for purchasing addons and gadgets in online games.
The boy had made online payments of small sums on multiple occasions and the parent did not get alerts on the withdrawals.
This is not an isolated case as many parents who lost money later identified from banks and from detailed account statements that their children themselves had used the money for various needs including gaming.
According to Cyber Cell officers, parents must exercise greater caution while giving mobile phones, tablets and computers to children for online classes as chances are high for them to get attracted to online games, social media and video streaming platforms.
T. Arulanandam, State auditor of Tamil Nadu High Higher Secondary School Graduate Teachers Association, said parents and elders should ensure supervision when children used mobile phones and tablets for classes.
“Working parents should ensure that someone is there in the house to monitor them or enable parental control options in devices to check their activities,” he said.
Rural Superintendent of Police S. Selvanagarathinam has urged parents to use parental control options in devices to restrict the content which children can access.
This would also help in restricting obscene advertisements and pop-up advertisements while using browsers and streaming platforms.
In the Android platform, parental control options can be enabled through the Google Play app (tap the profile icon at the top right-settings-family-parental controls-turn on parental controls).
Parental controls can also be done in Android devices by choosing options in the ‘digital wellbeing and parental control’ section in settings.
In iOS devices, parental control can be done by choosing various options in the ‘Screen Time’ section in settings.
The app ‘Google Family Link for parents’ also offers advanced options of parental control of devices used by children and teenagers.
