Protecting Children Online |
Protecting Children Online Steps Toward Making Your Computer "Weirdo-Proof"
It's 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 seedy individuals who want to cause harm. This article will describe a few of them.
The first step in protecting your children at the computer is to prevent their access to passwords. This will keep them from sharing passwords with others and inadvertently enabling hacking into your system. If you think about it, there's no reason why a five, seven, or even twelve year old needs to know the passwords to sensitive areas on the computer unless you've given them permission! In fact, children don't need to know the password used to access the Internet either. It may be a hassle to type it in each time they want to get online, but it's better to know the times that they connect than to have them sneak online without your permission and knowledge of their activities.
The second step towards protecting your children online is using the computer together. Siting next to your child while he or she peruses the Internet, you can guide him or her to make safe and intelligent decisions. You can approve websites and bookmark them together. You can monitor the conversations your children have with their friends and teach them appropriate online behavior at the same time. You can make recommendations and create a private time for quality time as well.
The third step involves blocking access to inappropriate areas altogether. You and your children may not always agree about what's appropriate, but as a guardian, you're in control and you're ultimately responsible for their safety. Take the time to investigate software tools that put you in control and allow you to block access to certain websites. If you use an online service like AOL (America Online), you can use its internal Parental Control settings to block access to various chatrooms and websites. You could even block instant messaging and email from anyone who isn't a fellow AOL user. Other tools available online operate similar to the way that AOL's Parental Control settings work, however no collection of tools could replace the reinforcement of mom and dad. Never let your children speak with strangers and never leave them alone at the computer unattended. Children just don't have the experience that adults have and they don't have the skills required to handle inappropriate conversations, emails, or images found online.
NOTE: Some of these tools include kid-specific web browsers that will visit pre-approved websites. Others include browser plug-ins that won't allow access to online areas that contain forbidden keywords.
Another step requires teaching your children to never ever volunteer personal information. Under no circumstances, should children give their personal names, home addresses, phone numbers, or school information to anyone over the Internet regardless of the situation. In the even this information is required to enter a contest of some sort, be sure that you're the one who makes the decision to supply it and that you're the one who does it.
Performing all of these steps won't be easy. However you can help minimize resistance to your monitoring efforts by explaining why you're taking these precautions. Smaller children will probably enjoy the time you spend together at the computer, but older children and pre-teens may resent it. To help build a case for your concern, you might want to show your older children a few news stories that exemplify the dangers that unsupervised children are exposed to. The newspaper is unfortunately full of examples but with your help, we can reduce them world-wide.
Word count 626
|
Accessorizing Computers What Comes Out of the Box is a Really Just a Starter Kit Yesterday, we spent about three ... read more
Automating Things with Batch Files They Work on Today's Computers Too! If you're familiar with MS-DOS at all, you'll recall ... read more
Basic GUI Terminology Knowing What You're Working With Helps Technicians Getting help with your computer software can be easier when ... read more
Buying a Computer What To Do And Why It isn't fair, but buying a computer is just plain easier for ... read more
Cheap and Fast Software An Introduction to Shareware Visit any computer store today and you'll find what seems like miles ... read more
A Few Common Computer Errors (And What They Mean) Computer errors can pop up when least expected, they can cause ... read more
Computer Help Where and How to Get It Well there's no denying it - No matter how new or how ... read more
Computer Security In Today's Society, Protecting Your Computer Is A Requirement Advances in computer technology is a double-edged sword. On ... read more
Customizing Your Computer with Preferences Making Your Computer Work with You - Not Against You Although you did not design ... read more
Dust Kills Cleaning the Unit Fan is Essential Computer Care Between taking care of the household, the kids, the pets, ... read more
Programs Included With a New Computer Are they good enough to stand on their own? The Windows operating systems already ... read more
Introduction to Programming Controlling Your Computer with a Programming Language In a previous article, we introduced automating some tasks with ... read more
Networking Home Computers Increasing Productivity With the Whole Family Have you ever thought about networking your computers at home? If ... read more
Open Source Software If you've spent any lengthy amount of time on the Internet, you've probably heard of open source ... read more
Protecting Children Online Steps Toward Making Your Computer "Weirdo-Proof" It's an unfortunate fact of reality, but children are the most ... read more
Selling Your Computer Looking At Alternatives At some point, your needs are going to outgrow the capabilities of your computer. ... read more
Smartphones What's the craze all about? If you haven't heard of smartphones, we'd like to learn where you've been hiding ... read more
Software Piracy It's Best To Avoid It At All Costs Like electronic identity theft, computer viruses, and the spread of ... read more
Understanding Compression What It Is and What's Involved Downloading files from the Internet has always been one of the most ... read more
Understanding Operating Systems Every new computer that's brought home from the store has an operating system installed onto it. But ... read more
Using Computers It's Not Rocket Science These days it's strange to hear people say, "I'm just not computer literate," as ... read more
Viruses What They Are And One Reason Why People Make Them Over recent years, computers have become synonymous with viruses ... read more
What's That File? An Introduction to File Extensions In an effort to be "user-friendly," Windows (and perhaps some other operating ... read more
When Less Is More Clean Your Disk Drive of Unnecessary Files and Your Computer's Performance Will Improve When it comes ... read more
Working With Computers In Today's Society, There's No Escape Well, we've been warned that this time would come - probably ... read more
|
|
|
Disclaimer:
The Publisher has strived to be as accurate and complete as possible in
the creation of this website, notwithstanding the fact that he does not
warrant or represent at any time that the contents within are accurate
due to the rapidly changing nature of the Internet.
This site
is a common sense guide to Protecting Children Online. In practical advice websites,
like anything else in life, there are no guarantees of income made.
Readers are cautioned to reply on their own judgment about their
individual circumstances to act accordingly.
This site
is not intended for use as a source of legal, business, accounting or
financial advice. All readers are advised to seek services of competent
professionals in legal, business, accounting, and finance field.
Any
perceived slights of specific people or organizations are unintentional.
|