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Child Safety Online
Did you know? - Only 25% of children solicited by a predator on the internet told their parents about it?
Did you know? - 75% of children are willing to share personal information online about themselves and their family in exchange for goods and services.
Did you know? - 77% of the targets for online preditors were age 14 or older. Another 22% were users ages 10 to 13.
Did you know? - 75 percent of the solicited youth were not troubled, 10 percent did not use chat rooms and 9 percent did not talk to strangers.
Did you know? - Only 1/3 of the households with Internet access are proactively protecting their children!
Did you know? - One in five U.S. teenagers who regularly log on to the Internet say they have received an unwanted sexual solicitation via the Web. Solicitations were defined as requests to engage in sexual activities or sexual talk, or to give personal sexual information.
Did you know? - A survey from UK online centres has found that while three-quarters of mums and dads knew their children were regular internet-users, half of them didn't think their own internet or IT skills were good enough to supervise or assist with surfing. Topping the list of concerns were internet predators, inappropriate images and fraudsters. Other worries included cyber-bullying and the information children were sharing through social networking sites.
Help & Advice
Chat rooms have long been a favourite pastime on the internet for kids. They can be great fun and the children can make some great new friends online. The problem with chat rooms is that they are generally anonymous, so the person that they are chatting to may not be who they say they are.
Unless you supervise your children whenever they are in a chat room then controlling who they chat too can be a problem, although, there are some general guidelines that your children can follow to make their online chatting safer:
- Stay anonymous, they should use a nickname while online, and never reveal their real name.
- Never tell anyone where they live, not even if they have been chatting to the person for years.
- Never tell anyone what school they go to.
- Never give out phone numbers.
- Never agree to meet someone without a parent present, and ensure the person they are going to meet knows a parent will be accompanying them.
- Tell an adult if anything strange happens or anything is said to them that makes them feel uncomfortable.
- Introduce yourself in the chat room to their online friends, especially if your child wants to meet them.
Although these guidelines may seem fairly obvious, by ensuring that your children follow them they can help remove some of the dangers.
What can you do to help?
So how many computers are there in your house? If you're like most people, just a few years ago you had one computer that everybody shared (sometimes not so peacefully). Then came the advent of laptops and now netbooks and mobile devices galore. Chances are that several - if not all - of the folks in your house have their own computers. And maybe some of you have more than one computer of your own!
When everyone used one home computer, it was fairly simple to use antivirus software to keep the computer healthy and to view the browser's history to see who visited which websites (and decide whether some safe-surfing reminders were in order). But with more devices and more decentralized online activities, it's considerably harder to monitor it all.
Being able to communicate the need for safety online is an important part of enforcing parental controls at home. At first, your youngsters may resist the idea of being controlled online, but if you approach the topic with safety as the focus, they are more likely to see that good Web practices are one way they can help protect the family. Sitting down with your kids and showing them the parental controls you're using can also help them understand that your objective really is safe surfing - not just another dastardly attempt to curtail their freedoms.
Windows 7
The newest operating systems provide tools known as parental controls to give parents the ability to manage their kids' Internet use. In Windows 7, you'll find these tools in the Control Panel's User Accounts and Family Safety area. Click Set up parental controls for any user to get started. If you have multiple computers in your house, it's a good idea to create a homegroup in Windows 7 and set up parental controls for all the computers in your household.
Windows 7's parental controls make managing your child's use of the computer easy. You can set limits on when they can sign in, which sites they can visit, and which games and programs they can use.
The first step in putting parental controls in place is to create user accounts for each child. Do this by clicking Add or Remove User Accounts in the User Accounts and Family Safety area in the Control Panel. You will also be prompted to add a password to your own user account, because now you're the administrator of the kids' accounts and want to restrict who can change settings.
When you're ready to choose the Parental Controls settings, click Set up parental controls for any user in the User Accounts and Family Safety area of the Control Panel. Click the user account you want to control and then click the links for Time, Games, and Allow and Block Specific Programs settings. For example, clicking Time displays a schedule in which you can set the daily hours it's OK for your child to be online.
The Game settings allow you to select the game-rating level you'll allow your child to play - such as Early Childhood, Everyone, Everyone 10+, Teen, Mature, or Adults Only. You can also block specific kinds of content in games, ranging from profanity to crude humor, drug references, and sexual and violent content. You can also block or allow specific games installed on your computer. This helps ensure that your pre-teens aren't playing the more mature games you allow your teens to play.
Finally, you can use the Parental Controls settings to determine which programs on your computer your kids can use. When you click Allow and Block Specific Programs and select the option that restricts program use, Windows 7 searches for specific programs and displays them in a list. You can then click the checkboxes for each program that your child has permission to use. Click OK to save your changes.
You can change any setting at any time by returning to the Parental Controls page in the Control Panel and clicking the user account you want to change.
Online Help & Advice
An excellent website at www.thinkuknow.co.uk is a must-visit site for parents, carers, teachers and young people especially, where you can find the latest information on the sites they like to visit, mobiles and new technology.
Find out what's good, what's not and what you can do about it. If you look after young people there's an area for you too with resources you can use in the classroom, at home or just to get with it. Most importantly, there's also a place which anyone can use to report if they feel uncomfortable or worried about someone they are chatting to online.
All the information on the website is brought to you by the team at the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre.
- Know what your children are doing online and who they are talking to. Ask them to teach you to use any applications you have never used.
- Help your children to understand that they should never give out personal details to online friends - personal information includes their messenger id, email address, mobile number and any pictures of themselves, their family or friends - if your child publishes a picture or video online - anyone can change it or share it.
- If your child receives spam / junk email & texts, remind them never to believe them, reply to them or use them.
- It's not a good idea for your child to open files that are from people they don't know. They won't know what they contain - it could be a virus, or worse - an inappropriate image or film.
- Help your child to understand that some people lie online and that therefore it's better to keep online mates online. They should never meet up with any strangers without an adult they trust.
- Always keep communication open for a child to know that it's never too late to tell someone if something makes them feel uncomfortable.
- Teach young people how to block someone online and report them if they feel uncomfortable.
Get Safe Online
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Tactical Panda is a supporter of the Get Safe Online campaign. Get Safe Online is an excellent website designed to help you and your family use your computer and the internet safely with useful advice, tips and help with a very wide range of online safety issue.
Get Safe Online is the UK's national internet security awareness campaign for the general public, micro and small businesses. The campaign is a joint initiative between HM government, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), and private sector sponsors from the worlds of technology, retail and finance. The campaign website www.getsafeonline.org is the definitive source of free, unbiased, current information and advice about how to keep safe and secure online. |
Childnet International
Childnet International's mission is to work in partnership with others around the world to help make the Internet a great and safe place for children.
In all its work Childnet seeks to take a balanced approach. On their website you can read about the way they have sought to promote the positive and highlight the creative and inspiring ways children and young people are using the medium for good. You can also read about the ways they have responded to the negative aspects and dangers for children.
Childnet works in 3 main areas of Access, Awareness, Protection & Policy.
- Access and promoting quality content - Helping children and young people to use the net constructively, showcase quality content and enable others to use our resources and develop new projects.
- Awareness and advice - Helping children and young people acquire new 'net literacy' skills and giving advice to industry, organisations, parents, teachers and carers about Internet and mobile safety.
- Protection and policy - Working with others to help protect children from being exploited in the online environments provided by new technologies as well as seeking to initiate and respond to policy changes.
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For more help, advice and guidance, please visit the Childnet website by clicking here, or the banner. |
For more local information, help and advice about how you can protect your child on the internet, please contact us at any time by clicking here.