Take Control Of Your Child's Internet Activity:
Online Parental Control Tips & Suggestions
Internet is a valuable source of information and a massive learning tool for
everyone. But as far as young children are concerned, the risks of the internet
highways may outweigh the benefits. It is not easy to protect your children
in their online activities. Most parents don't know enough about the internet
while young children absorb new technology and information quite easy and they
can easily trick their parents and take part in dangerous activities without
even know it.
There are thousands of predators out there looking for innocent inexperienced
children to take advantage of. The percentage of youths who have experienced
harassment online rose 70% between 2000 and 2007. Here are a few Parental Control
Tips and a few Parental Control Suggestions to help you protect your kids. Young
children should follow certain rules when they are online. If they follow these
rules no one can harm them through the internet.
Online Parental Control Tips/Rules:
Rule #1: Children should never use their real name online unless they are
100% sure who the person they are giving the name really is. Instead they should
use a nickname. They should never tell anyone their passwords or login information
or other sensitive personal information like Phone numbers, school name, family
name, address etc. They should never tell their age to an online stranger.
Rule #2: Children should always tell their parents if they receive any kind
of message that is scary. Child molesters are not stupid. They will try to carefully
approach a child, but if the child resists the shellfish molester will almost
always use stupid threats to scare them. Children should never accept instant
messages from strangers and by all means they should never accept mysterious
invitations to private chat rooms.
Rule #3: Children should never send their photographs to a stranger over the
internet. It's a good practice to never accept photographs too, unless they
are pretty sure who the person on the other end of the line is.
Rule #4: Children should never agree to meet a stranger live. The internet
molesters will do anything to persuade the young child to meet them. Even if
the stranger suggests that they should meet in a public place, children should
never accept such invitations.
Child's Internet Activity Suggestions: Teach Your Children and Learn
from them.
Spend some time with your child while they're online. Ask them to show you
their favorite websites and talk to them about the dangers of surfing on the
internet. You should also teach yourself how to report an internet crime (e.g.
child pornography or internet harassment). You may want to visit cybercrime.gov
for more information.
Is your children's school safe?
Your children may have access to the internet when they are at school. Make
sure the school has an internet monitoring software. If not, suggest that they
immediately install a parental control software or even a simple internet filtering
software that restricts access to websites. Most schools have software that
permit only certain educational webpages and resources to be accessible via
their computers. Make sure your children's school meets these criteria.
Learn more about your children's friends.
Do you know your children's online friends? Take some time to meet them
and even meet their parents. Talk to your children's friends about the dangers
of the internet highways and recommend to their parents to install a Parental
Control Software if they haven't already done so.
Install Parental Control Software or Internet Monitoring Software or both!
Software Technology offers a convenient solution to parents by presenting various
types of parental control software. These Software Programs use sophisticated
methods to filter the websites that can be viewed on your browser. You can also
have an overview of all the pages your child has visited while they were online.
You can specify certain rules (filters) and disallow various types of websites
from opening. Most Internet Parental Control software come with a built in database
of malicious websites. The database is usually updated automatically by the
company that provides the software. Of course you can specify your own websites
and block access to them at will.
Many Internet Parental Control Software include e-mail filters that block certain
types of e-mail and allows you to filter junk e-mail out of your inbox. Internet
monitoring software records all the online activity by creating snapshots of
the visited websites or by creating logs of the chat room conversations and
instant messaging conversations.
Everyday in the news, we hear about another child getting involved with an online predator and the worrying results of that meeting . Do not let this happen to your child. Have a look at this Internet Monitoring Software & Parental Control Software and Know what your children do online. There's also a free Internet Parental Control Safety Report to read.
By Mary Markell
|