Don’t turn a blind eye to internet safety for your children

Surfing the net the safer way

Parents need to keep an eye on their child’s internet activity to ensure they stay risk-free on-line

Used in the correct way, the internet can be infinitely helpful for children, providing wonderful tools for their education and entertainment.

However, as most parents are aware, when children are unsupervised or uneducated about risks, the internet can be as dangerous for children as a city street. There are many ways people can take advantage of the way your children use the internet. File sharing and downloading music and movies are extremely popular activities with teenagers, but often they are unaware that it can be illegal. For example, it can be very easy to download free music, but sometimes this can infringe copyright laws, which can lead to fines. Your child’s innocence could ultimately land you in trouble with the authorities.

Of course, most downloading is completely legal, but you also need to be mindful that if you are not downloading from a safe and legitimate source there is a chance that a virus could infect your computer. Ultimately, this could lead to costly damage to your equipment. It is even possible for a virus like an auto-dialer to take information from your on-line bank accounts and send them covertly to criminals.

Even the most attentive and responsible parents can’t monitor their children all of the time, and it can be hard for the authorities to “police” the internet. Sadly, there is a very real threat through chatrooms where those with ill intentions pose as innocent youngsters. However, parents and children can work together to learn to play it safe and make the most of the countless opportunities the internet can bring. Whether it is work for school, or getting the lowdown on their favourite popstar, the internet provides many advantages for children who are growing up in an increasingly technologicallyfocused world.

A recent Reader’s Digest survey revealed that over a third of children use the internet regularly after school, so there is no doubt that as responsible adults we must make sure we do everything we can to protect them. One of the easiest ways to do this is to use filtering software such as parental controls. Using parental controls enables you to create on-line boundaries for individual children so they can’t wander into inappropriate areas – and also can help to protect them from unwanted attention when on-line by stopping them revealing their personal information. You can block access to sexually explicit or violent material, or even stop them using the internet at certain times of the day.

BT’s free guide, “Internet Green X Code”, can be downloaded from www.bt.com/broadband/security

 

Search engines designed specifically for kids are also great, simple tools to enable you to have peace of mind when your child is on-line when you aren’t sitting with them. Not only are sites like www.yahooligans.com very easy to use, but they also only link to sites that have content suitable for youngsters.

Sometimes the simplest ideas are the most effective. By using the internet as a social time for you and your children, you can spend time together while getting an idea of what it is they like to do on-line. Chatrooms can be great fun for you and your children, but children need to be made aware of the dangers inherent in using the internet to socialise. According to the recent Readers Digest poll, 40%of children visit chatrooms in the hours after school, which, unfortunately, is the time which predatory adults go on-line. It is important to let your children know that people are not always who they claim, and that even those who seem to be your friends on-line can be very different in the real world. If you can’t discourage your children from using chatrooms, make sure the room is hosted and try to keep a close eye on who they are talking to.

For more advice sites, www.thinkuknow.co.uk and www.safeteens.com are a great help.

The best alternative to chatrooms is Instant Messaging. Instant Messenger will allow you to create your own personal chatroom, and it is usually a lot safer as everyone should know exactly who they are talking to and who they have invited into the conversation. You can download Instant Messaging (IM) software , such as Yahoo! Messenger (linked to Yahoo! accounts), and then you can see when friends (people on your e-mail contact list) are on-line, so you can chat to them. You can use any name when you are chatting, but everyone will still know it is you as your e-mail address is shown. If someone wants to chat to you, but you are unsure of who they are, you can easily block them.

A good resource for you and your children is the Internet Green Cross Code. You can download this guide from www.bt.com/broadband/security for free. It contains loads of advice children can easily read, along with some great tips for adults. It contains simple tips children should be taught, like never send pictures of themselves, or using their real names in chatrooms. It will teach them to be as careful about strangers they meet on-line as those they’d meet on the street. It also discourages them from ever meeting up alone with people they have met on-line, whoever they are.

The Internet Green Cross Code also has some great tips, like putting the computer in a central place in the home where you can see the screen without your children feeling like you are hanging over their shoulder. It also recommends you develop an open relationship with your child with regard to the internet so they feel they can come to you immediately if they are worried about anything or anyone they have stumbled across on-line so that you can help.

BT’s comprehensive broadband package provides e-mail anti-virus software and built-in firewalls that help protect your PC. BT Total Broadband also gives you the ability to manage your children’s time online, and with Parental Guardian you can receive regular reports, which help you to monitor your children’s on-line activity and keep an eye on who they’re e-mailing, who’s e-mailing them and sites they’re visiting.

 

Your child should feel free to come to you if they are worried about anything on-line

Ten tips to keeping children safe on-line:

1. 1. Talk with children about what they do on-line and, where possible, sit with them while they are on-line
2. Teach children to be as careful about strangers on-line as they are in the street
3. Teach children not to give out personal information, such as their address, the name of their school, mobile phone number or webcam pictures
4. Do not let children meet someone in person whom they met on-line without your permission or without another adult present
5. Review histories or logs on computers to see where your children have been. For home use, set your children up with separate user accounts thatcontrol which sites they can visit and how long they are on-line
6. Check the tools that your Internet Service Provider offers
7. Parents should ask children to share their on-line user name and passwords
8. Put the home computer somewhere you can always see the screen.
9. Consider installing internet monitoring software to track what your children do on-line
10. Educate yourself in the key issues surrounding the internet

 

 

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