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Keep Your Kids Safe on the World Wide Web

by: PhyllisWheeler
Total views: 11 | Word Count: 359

Here's the issue: how to be sure your kids are safe from viewing objectionable sites when they are searching the Internet. After all, you don't want them to stumble across something they should not see.

Perhaps you'd like to buy a solution that you can use on your computer that will not allow them to look at objectionable sites, yet will allow them to freely browse.

Here's the bad news: filtering programs can't do the job by themselves. NentNanny and other applications like it search for certain words in the Web site your child is clicking on. Simple words like "belly" can be targets for blocking, causing frustration, while research on "breast cancer" may be impossible.

But these word-blocking solutions are no good at all at blocking objectionable photo sites that have no objectionable words attached. Ask me how I know? My teenage son figured it out. He just went to Google Images and started looking. Your son could do that too. And the objectionable sites he found weren't blocked by NetNanny, which was turned on.

The problem is that filter programs search for individual words. They never look at pictures, and in fact cannot.

So, how can you protect your child?

*Put the computers the kids use where YOU are in your home. Then monitor what they are doing.

*Have a login password that only the adults know. The kid has to have permission, and oversight, to use the computer.

*Ensure that the kid logs off when the computer session is over, or turns the computer off. This makes the password required for the next session.

*Use filtering software. It may help.

*Make sure the kids know your expectations and the consequences for disobeying.

*Unplug the computer from the Internet if the child is using a word processor or other local program only.

*Give younger kids your own email address to use. This protects them from objectionable spam. Give teens an email address, but instruct them to give it out only to people they know personally.

Your watchfulness will pay off. Your children will be protected from what they should not see, and they will also learn good habits for using the Internet as adults.

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About the Author

Phyllis Wheeler, the Computer Lady, offers this advice for parents. She also furnishes homeschool computer courses through MotherboardBooks.com, which has offered do-it-yourself computer science courses for kids and teens since 2003.  

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FollowText.com » Computers » Keep Your Kids Safe on the World Wide Web

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