Just as it is your job to protect your children in everyday
life, it is your job as a parent to protect your children online. Parents who
wouldn’t allow their children to go out with people they don’t know often think
nothing of letting their children spend hours online chatting with strangers.
Today, online crimes can easily enter your home, so it is your responsibility
to make your child aware of the online dangers that exist. In addition to
communicating with your child about online safety, pro-active parents can
purchase software that may prevent potential problems.
Filtering programs such as Net Nanny and Cyber Patrol can
offer some restriction to inappropriate web sites that might contain
pornography. However, these programs aren’t foolproof and do not provide real-time
alerts and notification. Your child may still be able to access some
pornographic sites and some legitimate sites may accidentally be blocked.
If you are concerned about your child’s online activities, a
parental control service by Online Safety PAL and program like Online Safety Shield
can be used to help ensure online child safety when you are not around. These programs and services are set-up to
record and monitor all computer activity and provide real-time alert
notification. Parents can create a list of certain specific forbidden words,
such as pornography or sex. If any of these words are typed during a session,
the program automatically records it. The online monitoring feature can give
parents peace of mind by being able to view online recordings. Working parents
can even set the program to send them alert emails to their computer and text
messages on their mobile phones to let them know when there has been any
improper use of the computer. If your child attends after school care that has
Internet access, be sure to check with them to see if they use a control or
filtering program.
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