Online child protection Steps to make your computer "weirdo-proof "

Online child protection Steps to make your computer

This is an unfortunate fact of reality, but children are the most victimized computer users on the Internet today. The good news is that there are some practical steps you can take to protect your children from sexual predators, hackers, and other people with seeds that want to cause harm. This article describes some of them.

The first step to protecting your children from the computer is to avoid their access to passwords. This will prevent them from sharing passwords with other people and allowing them to hack into your system inadvertently. If you think about it, there is no reason why a five, seven, or even twelve-year-old needs to know the passwords for sensitive areas on the computer unless you have given them permission! In fact, children do not need to know the password used to access the Internet either. It may be a hassle to write it every time you want to connect, but it is better to know the times you connect than to sneak them online without your permission and knowledge of your activities.

The second step to protecting your children online is to use the team together. Location with your child while surfing the Internet, you can guide him or her to make safe and intelligent decisions. You can approve the websites and mark them together. You can monitor the conversations your children have with their friends and teach them the appropriate online behavior at the same time. You can make recommendations and create a private time for quality time as well.

The third step is to completely block access to inappropriate areas. You and your children do not always agree on what is appropriate, but as a guardian, you are in control and ultimately responsible for your safety. Take the time to study the software tools that put you in control and allow you to block access to certain websites. If you are using an online service such as AOL (America online), you can use your internal parental control settings to block access to multiple chat rooms and websites. You can even block instant messaging and email from anyone who is not an AOL user.

Other tools available online work in the same way as the AOL parental control settings, but no tool collection can replace Mom and dad reinforcement. Never let your children talk to strangers and never leave them alone on the computer without supervision. Children simply do not have the experience that adults have and do not have the skills to handle inappropriate conversations, emails or images found online.

Note: Some of these tools include child-specific web browsers that will visit previously approved Web sites. Others include browser plug-ins that do not allow access to online areas that contain banned keywords.

Another step requires that you teach your children not to offer personal information. Under no circumstances should children give their personal names, home addresses, phone numbers, or school information to anyone on the Internet regardless of the situation. In the same this information is required to enter a contest of some sort, make sure that you are the one making the decision to provide it and that you are the one who does it.

Doing all these steps won't be easy. However, you can help minimize the resistance to your monitoring efforts by explaining why you are taking these precautions. Younger children will probably appreciate the time spent together on the computer, but older children and pre-teens may resent it. To help you build a case for your concern, you may want to show your older children some news stories illustrating the dangers to which children are exposed without supervision. Unfortunately, the newspaper is full of examples, but with its help we can reduce them all over the world.

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