#HumanTraffickingAwareness: Do you know your childs' exact location?

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According to a “Responsible Digital Parenting” survey, 73% of South African parents do not track the location of their child.

The reasons for this vary: 37% have never thought of tracking the location, while 31% do not know how to do it. There is an option to have the software, which lets parents locate their children on a map and set a safe area for them to stay in, installed on their children’s devices. However, 41% of parents in South Africa claim they do not have it installed on any of their devices.

An IOL article, based on stats, reveals that a child goes missing every five hours in South Africa.

“Modern times offer a wide range of tools which can help in preventing accidents in real or digital life. It is crucial to know how to use them, what their benefits are, and, actually, use them. Tracking your child’s location can definitely save you a lot of trouble – its advantages lie also in the fact that it allows to control not only digital, but also real life of the child,” commented Andrey Sidenko, head of Child Safety at Kaspersky Network.

To secure and protect your child both in digital and in real life, Kaspersky strongly recommends following this advice:

• Learn more on the topic of children’s cybersecurity: explore modern trends, apps, the way of behavior that has to be adopted in order to safeguard against dangers (for instance, the basic security rules while on the internet); update your network security knowledge periodically.

• Communicate with your child and define the borders which are not meant to be crossed: discuss with them safe locations both real and webpages.

• Install a reliable security solution to monitor your child’s activity successfully.

Here are several apps that help give peace of mind.

• Namola

  Often called “the Uber of emergencies”, Namola is a South African app that lets you request emergency assistance using your phone’s GPS location. If you ask for help, the operators call you back to confirm the details and dispatch aid from nearby police stations, security services or other emergency officials.

  You can add up to five people as emergency contacts who will be alerted if you request emergency services on the app. The contacts are also kept in the loop about your current location and can call the operators to find out the nature of the emergency.

• Find my Friends

  Find my Friends is a location-sharing app that lets you locate your loved ones. Each “friend” has their own personal icon on the app’s map, so you’ll know their location in real time. One of its features lets friends issue an alert to each other if they need help. Attached to the alert are details such as the person’s address, the time and their phone’s battery life.

• Glympse

  Glympse lets you share your real-time location with family, friends and colleagues via an icon dropped on a map. You can set up groups for specific occasions, such as a social gathering or an important meeting, and request an update from anyone you might be concerned about. A bonus is that you can share your location via the web, rather than an app, while remaining invisible to strangers.

• Life360
  Life360 is a location-tracking app which is designed to help families stay in touch and monitor each other's activity. The app’s features can be cranked up to a high level of monitoring, providing other members with information on how fast they are moving, delivering alerts when they arrive at certain locations, and recording location history to provide a map of their behaviour.

The above apps are available on iOS and Android devices.