Safety tips to protect your kids online

July 31, 2009 – 2:09 am

Most parents are aware that the internet presents new hazards to kids. Here are few tips for parents to make internet safe place for their kids.

Keep computer out of your child’s bedroom -  Keep the computer in a common room or any other well used area of the house, where you can easily monitor your child’s activity on consistent basis.

Set boundaries - On most of the sites, children under the age of 14 are not allowed to register. Make this the non-negotiable point.
Set limitation - Limit your child’s Internet usage. Tell them when they can go online, for how much time and what they can do online.
Talk to your kids about Internet safety - Talk to your kids about Internet safety and explain them why you are concerned. Make sure they understand that you will be watching their activities and tell them to follow these instructions

• Do not give personal information like last name, phone number, address etc. to strangers   Do not post videos or pictures that could be used to identify you
• Do not meet in person anyone you have met only online
• If anything makes them uncomfortable, they should come and talk to you about it

Create your own profile on same sites as your child’s: Create your own profile on same social networking sites (eg - MySpace, Facebook etc.) as your child’s and add them as friends. On regular basis, check your child’s profile page and see what pictures they have posted and read some of the posts to see what others are saying.
Make sure your child’s profile page is set to private: You can set the profile page either to public or to private. Make sure your child’s profile page is set to private, as private pages can be viewed only by the people the user invites personally whereas public pages can be viewed by anyone.
Ensure that your child keeps all private information off their profile page: Your child’s profile page should not contain information like phone number, home address etc. Also make sure that they do not accept request from strangers.
Know your child’s passwords to all email accounts: Make sure your child keeps a list of password available to you, so that you can monitor & keep track of their online activities.
Monitor child’s search engine activity: Periodically check the history of your computer to view your child’s activities online.

Use parental controls: Parental controls can be set to send all emails going to your child’s account through your account first, enabling you to screen everything your child sees. You can also limit emails according to several criteria, for example, emails with offensive words or which require personal information can  be blocked. You can even set it, to receive emails only from the approved addresses.
Install content filtering software: Content filtering software will not allow your child to access inappropriate sites. Most content filtering software has the ability to filter via keywords, like adult, drugs, weapons etc. It will also send you a report with list of sites which user tried to access and was denied.