The Risks of Online Gaming with Eric R. Jones

Transparency in a family builds trust, but sharing information while gaming online can set you up for unnecessary risks. Your children may be sharing details that can impact not just them, but you. Today's guest is Eric Jones. Eric is an experienced product manager and developer with over 20 years experience and more than 9 years in Agile Software Development. He is the founder and creator of All Knowing Parent focused on educating people on all avenues of technology and hardware. Show Notes: [0:50] - Eric shares what he does as a career and about his startup. [2:27] - As a father of two young girls, Eric is adamant about monitoring technology use. [3:50] - Eric is a big believer in transparency. [5:40] - Gaming is not just a casual hobby anymore. [7:01] - On all gaming consoles there is some sort of communication with other players online available both as text and voice. [9:10] - On some platforms, you have to be "friends" with someone to play together. Some games do a better job than others on safety. [10:15] - Eric talks daily to his children about safety in gaming. These conversations started before they were even playing it. [12:03] - Setting rules ahead of time is important to avoid cleaning up a mess. [13:23] - Kids tend to give out so much information easily. [14:48] - What are the pieces of information that you should make sure are kept private? Eric says everything. [17:01] - Even giving out gamer handles from other consoles shouldn't be shared. [18:28] - Consoles protect your IP address better but gaming on servers do not. [20:25] - Almost everything these days is connected to the internet. Unfortunately, a lot of pressure is put on the user. [22:18] - When you're playing online, you don't see the type of people you play with through a username. Eric explains what swatting is. [23:20] - People can also raid a streamer's channel with obscenities and can piece together information through social engineering. [25:03] - Don't assume someone doesn't want your information. They may hack you simply as a launching off point to something else. [26:41] - Referring to a previous episode, everything connected to the internet can slowly give away pieces of information. [28:16] - Social engineering is not as hard as you might think in online gaming just by watching how you play. [30:57] - Children trust first and as adults, we've learned to trust second.  [31:54] - A gaming company's priority is not user safety. [33:16] - If playing with people you don't know, be extremely kind and avoid topics like politics and religion. [35:21] - DDoS attacks are less common these days but can still happen. [39:11] - Unfortunately, if a kid really wants something, they will be motivated to get around things you have in place to keep them safe. [39:45] - Eric describes how and why he founded All Knowing Parent. [41:14] - Eric's goal is to educate and be a support for people to better understand the technology in their life. [43:12] - There are no cookie-cutter answers. Eric helps people with each question as they arise and gives an example of a recent customer question. [44:10] - All Knowing Parent is offering discounts for Easy Prey listeners! Check that out at AllKnowingParent.com/EasyPrey Thanks for joining us on Easy Prey. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and leave a nice review.  Links and Resources: Podcast Web Page Facebook Page whatismyipaddress.com Easy Prey on Instagram Easy Prey on Twitter Easy Prey on LinkedIn Easy Prey on YouTube Easy Prey on Pinterest All Knowing Parent Website All Knowing Parent - Easy Prey Special Discounts All Knowing Parent on Facebook All Knowing Parent on Twitter All Knowing Parent on Instagram