Online threats, explained one at a time: what each is, what to do
Ten topics, each written the same way: what the thing actually is, how it arrives, and a short ordered list for the moment it happens. No jargon, and no attempt to frighten anyone into reading further.
Most guidance on this subject is organised around fear, which makes it hard to use at the moment you need it. This library is organised around recognition instead: what the pattern looks like, what it wants, and what to do in what order. Each page ends with a numbered list because that is what people actually come back for.
The topics
Scam websites
The shared tells of a fake shop, service or casino, and a two-minute checklist.
Chat & messaging
What makes a chat room safe, which apps children use, and what to check first.
Phishing
How to recognise the shape of the message instead of memorising this week's story.
Cyberbullying
Screenshot, block, report, talk: why that order, and which reaction makes it worse.
Grooming
The four-step pattern, and the one rule a child can use to interrupt it.
Malware
The four routes it actually takes into a family device, and what to do after a click.
Identity theft
What gets collected, what it is used for, and why a child's details are worth more.
Privacy & footprint
What is already visible about you, and the six switches that close most of it.
Screen time
Why the total is the wrong number, and what to agree on instead.
Judging a website
Four questions, asked in the same order, that judge any unfamiliar page.
The shape they share
Read enough of these and the same three moves appear in nearly all of them. Something manufactures urgency, so that the second thought never arrives. Something asks for secrecy, whether from a bank, a family or a friend. And something requests an action that cannot be reversed: an instant transfer, a code read aloud, an image sent.
That is why the household rules do so much work relative to the settings. A rule about urgency, a rule about secrecy and a rule about money cover the openings that almost every one of these categories has to pass through, whatever story is attached on the day.
It is also why the technical controls are described here as necessary rather than sufficient. A parental-control setting decides what a device permits; it has nothing to say about a phone call, a friend’s handset, or a message that arrived through a channel you allowed.
What to read first, depending on why you are here
If something has just happened, go straight to the relevant page and start at its “what to do” list. Those are written in order deliberately, and the first step is almost always to keep the evidence, screenshots of the message, the username and the timestamp, because the account may be gone tomorrow.
If nothing has happened and you are preparing, the highest-return reading is short: the ten house rules, then the setup guide for whichever device your child uses most, then the one topic here that matches your actual worry. That is an evening’s work and it covers more ground than reading all ten of these pages in sequence.
Where a word on any of these pages is unfamiliar, the glossary defines it in a sentence, not a paragraph. If you are reading on behalf of an older relative instead of a child, the guidance for grandparents collects the same material from the other direction, with the scripts that are aimed specifically at that age group and a first-hour list for the case where money has already moved.
What is deliberately not on this list
There is no page here about hackers, and none about the parts of the internet that make good headlines. Not because those do not exist, but because almost nothing that happens to a family arrives that way. It arrives through a message, a login given away, a purchase nobody approved, or a conversation that moved somewhere private.
Writing about the dramatic version crowds out the ordinary one, and the ordinary one is what a household can actually do something about. Every topic on this page earned its place by being both common and answerable.
Questions about this library
Which of these should I worry about most?
For a child under about ten, contact risks (grooming and chat) matter more than content risks, and money leaving through a game matters more than either. For a teenager, privacy and the endless kind of screen time move up. For an adult in the house, phishing and scam sites are the daily background noise.
Do I need to read all of them?
No. Read the one that brought you here, then the two the page links to. They cross-reference deliberately because these categories overlap in practice: a scam site and a malware infection are frequently the same incident at two stages.
Is there one rule that covers most of it?
Two, and they are on the ten rules page: telling an adult never makes the consequence worse, and every purchase goes through a grown-up. Between them they catch a surprising share of what appears on this page.
How current is this?
Each page carries the date it was last reviewed. Where a page describes a menu path or quotes a figure, it names the source and the date that source was checked; the reasoning is on the editorial standards page.
My child has already been affected. Where do I start?
With the relevant page’s “what to do” list, which is written in order for exactly that moment. In almost every case the first step is to keep the evidence before doing anything else, because accounts and messages disappear.
Is any of this a police matter?
Yes: threats of violence, blackmail, any request for images involving a child, and sustained harassment. Those are not school or platform matters, and in those cases nothing should be deleted.