Keeping the Kids Safe Online -

Looking after your kids is number one. We know that. We will guide you through the minefield that is the Internet. There are lots of things that you can do.

Read through our check list below and see how you can let your kids access the internet safely.

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Keeping Kids Safe

It is so easy to access just about anything on the world wide web. Children often know a lot more about the Internet than their parents. Just have a read through the list below. This will give you some pointers.

One of the most important things you can do is spend time with your child when they have access to the world wide web.

We know that is not always possible, so what else is there. Well quite a few. But none are as good as spending time with your child when they have access to the world wide web. You must remember that no matter how good a piece of software is it may still crash. Or worse just stop working.

• Teach your children about the dangers of giving out their personal details
• Encourage your children to talk about what they do online
• Use a good ISP that lets you set limits for children. AOL is very good for this
• Use Content Advisor if you use Internet Explorer
• Use a piece of filtering software

Teach your Children Make sure you teach your children about the dangers of giving their names, school etc out to people they don't know. Make sure they realise that the other person might not be telling the truth about themselves. If a child is to young to grasp the dangers then they should not be using the World Wide Web unsupervised.

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Encourage your children to talk
Make sure you encourage your children to talk about what they do online. Find out what they like and don't like about using the World Wide Web. Make sure children know what to do if they visit a web site they don't like. Run good popup blocking software on any children's logon accounts on your computer. Don't tell children off if you see they have been visiting sites they shouldn't. Talk to them and encourage them to tell you about how they got there. Also check your computer for spyware regularly.

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Use a good ISP
If you have children then your ISP can make all the difference. Some ISP's like AOL have built in parental controls. These can be used to control what other members of your family are allowed to se on the Internet. AOL has settings such as PG, 15, etc. Each can be customised to block or allow things like chat rooms, Email and more.

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Use Content Advisor
If you use the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser you can use the built in feature called 'Content Advisor'. For information on Content Advisor and its limitations visit the Microsoft Website.

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Filtering Software
If your ISP does not provide parental control then you can always download software you can install to restrict access. If you do a search on Google for 'parental controls' you will find lots of software, most charge a fee. Some offer a free trial such as CyberPatrol. There are many more online safety programs, the Google ads above should contain a couple.

Always read the website and documentation of any software before you buy to make sure the program does what you want. Try searching on google for 'review <product name>' to see what you can find out. Then when you are satisfied you can make the purchase. Be sure to follow our 'Safe Shopping Online' guide.

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