Talking about video safety is important to everyone. There are times when it can be outright essential. There are a variety of ways that Internet pranksters and Internet money seekers are using the Internet and videos to have fun and make money.
While this may be harmless in some cases, it can be dangerous for kids and for those that do not want to watch certain videos or share their personal information. Some of the most dangerous videos are set up to make money for the owner.
Making Money
There are a few ways that videos can make money for people and those ways involve the participation of the video viewer. The easiest way to stay safe in these cases is to simply watch the video and nothing else.
These videos may direct the viewer to follow a link or go to a specific website. They are often filled with the promise of money or another very lucrative business model. Following the link usually is harmless and simply makes a few cents for the video owner, but there can sometimes be viruses involved.
This comes back to the old adage that if it is too good to be true, then it probably is. One can always apply the logic that if the video owner had such a great business idea, then why are they producing videos and not simply following their business model. They will retort that they want to share with the world, but this is a very rare case.
Promoting a website
Yes, this is much the same as “making money”, but with a little twist. The video owner wants to make money, but the video itself is leading to a future amount of money. They are simply promoting their website through traffic and will make money on it later on down the road.
This is a harmless way for a video owner to make money. Just visiting a website is not that bad, but there can again be viruses. There is no way to know whether the website owner just wants traffic or whether they are promoting a more nefarious motive.
Again, the best policy is to avoid the unknown and be safe. If a person really wants to visit a large number of unknown web sites, then the best course is to use a good anti-virus program and firewall. Most web sites are harmless and it is rare that an issue will erupt. Using common sense is a good course of action.
Pranksters
Most video pranks are relatively harmless. There was a rash of videos that built suspense by promising a “ghost” or “UFO” and then when the viewer was sitting close and being very quiet, there would be a startling event near the end. Loud sounds and fast moving surprises were the catch word of that day.
These still exist and are harmless. Most of them are propagated by a friend or family member. Other pranks may, however, involve adult content spliced into or added to what appears to be a harmless video. For an adult that has no problem with a little adult content, there is no issue at all.
If a child is likely to watch a video, there are two things that should be done. Making sure that the browser and the video site are set up to block adult content will cut this down to a bare minimum. In addition to that, a parent should attempt to view all videos in their entirety before a child does.
This may be difficult, but it is not that bad to catch videos that are obviously popular. Checking the Internet and seeing what the current craze is can be a nice way to ferret out these videos and check them out. The Internet will also usually indicate that a certain video is false.
Video Safety
For an adult, there is not that much to being safe. For a parent, there is a little more to be done. Avoiding links within or around videos is always a good idea and taking a peek at videos that the child may want to see is another great idea. Also, keeping the computer safe with the right software will help keep incidents down to a minimum.
Author Bio
Katelyn Roberts is a video and music blogger who uses free video converter at KoyoteSoft.com when creating videos for all purposes and sharing them online. You can
convert to mp3 using KoyoteSoft.com too!
