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Seven Ways to Protect Your Children on the Internet
Seven Ways to Protect Your Children on the Internet
Access to the Internet is something like a civil right — it seems cruel to deprive people of high speed web access in a world where so much happens online. Since you want your kids to use the good things that exist online, you have to protect them from the things on the Internet that are bad. Luckily, protecting your kids while they write emails or do web-based research is pretty simple. There are seven things you can do to keep your kids’ online behavior worry-free. Internet monitors and responsible social networking are just the beginning.
1. Remove Your Family’s Personal Details from the Internet
One way to protect your children is to get rid of any personal details that may have been carelessly left around the web. This blog post from Carputers.net teaches you how to deal with online data brokers and data aggregation services, entities that gather information about people that use the Internet. These systems cannot differentiate between child and adult users, and store information about anyone and everyone. The good news is, you can opt out of their various databases. It’s one thing for some data broker to sell your cell phone number, but when they start collecting data about children, they’ve gone too far. Here’s a link to the Network Advertising Initiative’s program that helps people opt out of various data mining services.
2. Teach Your Kids About Identity Theft
It is never too early to teach a child about the dangers of identity theft. If your children are going to use the Internet, they need to know that some people use it to steal personal information. This is directly related to the issue of online personal safety — not every criminal on the Internet is a pedophile or a bully, some of them are just trying to rip you off.
This post from PC 911 is an easy to read beginner’s guide to preventing identity theft. The lessons are presented in a “top ten” list format, so you can easily condense this information into a form your kids will understand, or just have them read it on their own. Topics covered include not following links from emails, and not giving out details like social security numbers. It is a simple introduction the basic principles of online safety.
3. Learn How to Use Social Networking Sites
Your kids are using them. You should be using them too. This post from InternetSafety.com tries to emphasize that point by telling a cute little anecdote about a mom and daughter and Facebook. Look, any blog post that references Built to Spill is cool in my book, and this post makes a great point. If your kids know how to change the privacy settings on Facebook, you should know too.
4. Teach Your Kids Internet Safety While Using the Internet
Internet4Classes has a great list of websites that are meant to teach kids the basics of Internet safety. You could let your kids play around at any of these resources (such as the Federal government’s “iSafe” website) and learn to navigate the Internet while they learn how to stay safe.
5. Change Your Own Online Behavior
Not all of the dangers to children on the Internet come from the behavior of the children themselves. Internet safety for kids means making sure you aren’t jeopardizing your child’s security by your own actions as well. Think of social networking sites and the proliferation of “look what my kid did” photos — should you be putting photographs of your children in such accessible places? Outside of the security issue, does your child want that photograph to be visible to the general public? When considering how much Facebook time your young child’s details and photographs should get, remember they aren’t making these decisions for themselves, so you have to be diligent for them. iKeepSafe’s blog recently broke down a CBS News story about this very phenomenon. One of the recommendations is that you not post your child’s school name or other details, just as a safety measure. There’s something you may not have thought about before.
6. Use Web Filters
I’m sure that you’ve got web filters running right now — responsible parents with Internet access are probably all too familiar with blocking certain content using a web filter. But even if you’ve been using a filter for years, it may be time to check and make sure it is working properly. Web filter technology has gotten better and better, to the point that you can filter out sites with individual words and other cool features. An interesting spin on the “web filter” phenomenon is the “GodBlock”. Unlike conventional web filters, GodBlock promises to keep your child from accessing any web page in which there is mention of miracles, saviors, deities, or other religious propaganda. Check out this post by The Escapist on the subject of the GodBlock. This is evidence that you can block just about anything you want from your child’s Internet experience. If you’re concerned that your kids are getting around the web filter, check out LifeHacker’s explanation of the five most common “workarounds” for filters.
7. Use a Keylogger
Learn the basics of using a keylogger at KeyGhost then install and use a keylogger to keep track of your children’s activity online. A keylogger is the best way to read anything input into the keyboard. This way you don’t have to dig through web history and various email and social networking accounts to read what your kids are doing on the computer. You’ve already placed the computer in a public place and you use filters to block certain material on the Internet, but how do you know what your kids are emailing or posting to Myspace about? If you need a way to closely monitor your child’s web behavior, reading a keylogger report will give you a better idea of your kid’s activities online.
Just because your kids need to use the Internet doesn’t mean they need to have access to the entire web. You control your kid’s access to the Internet the same way you control your kid’s access to anything. You can use simple measures like keyloggers and websites about Internet safety to increase your kid’s chances of staying safe online.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 at 9:04 am and is filed under Computers, Health, Internet, Kids, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.