Reprinted from Renfrew-Collingwood News,
October/November 2002 Edition. Updated May 2005.
According to a recent poll done by Ipsos-Reid, approximately 70% of Canadian households own a personal computer and about 57% have access to the Internet. As the Internet continues its exponential growth, more and more people, especially parents of young children, feel the pressure to join this incredible revolution. Today, parents feel that in order to succeed in school or get ahead in this world, kids must have greater access to computers and, especially, to the World Wide Web. Young children today can get access to computers virtually everywhere — through their schools, local libraries, and community centres. As with everything happening these days with the Internet, we only hear about the “great benefits” of the Internet, how great it is, how it has revolutionized the way we have communicated with our friends and relatives, and how we have changed some of our traditional shopping habits, etc. Rarely, do we ever hear either the media or teachers talk about the “bad things” that pertain to this great medium of ours, the so called “dark side” of the web. The dark side of the web includes: pornography, hate literature, crime and violence promoting sites. So, what is a parent, guardian, or teacher to do? Read on.
Mission Impossible: “deleting the dark-side of the web”
The fact of the matter is that no matter how much we try to police the web, there is just absolutely no way of stopping these kinds of inappropriate activities from mushrooming up. But this is not an excuse to not attempt the impossible. Firstly, parents, guardians, teachers, etc. must play a more active role in controlling the use of the computer by young children. Guidelines and curfews must be created and the child must understand through education why those guidelines and curfews are in place. In 2001, Ipsos-Reid found that on 57% of the parents surveyed have computer use guidelines in place for their children; and, only 48% of you moms and dads have some kind of curfew on Internet usage. So the question begging to be asked is where in the blue moon are the other 50% or so parents and guardians? What kind of roles, if any, are they playing in all of this? If you are a parent, administrator, teacher or guardian who is in this boat, I urge you to go to one of the resource links listed below. If guidelines and curfews are “simply not your thingy”, a simple solution like just being with your child when he or she is on the Internet is probably enough to deter him or her from going to the wrong places. In case you were wondering, only about 51% of those surveyed by Ipsos-Reid were actually doing that.
Make sure that your child or children DO NOT:
- give out personal information (including their name, home address, phone number, age, race, family income, school name or location, or friends’ names).
- use your credit card online without your permission.
- share their passwords to their e-mail, instant messaging, or Internet access, even with close friends.
- arrange face-to-face rendezvous with someone they meet online unless you approve of the meeting and go with them to a public place.
- respond to e-mail messages that make them feel confused or uncomfortable. They should ignore the sender, end the communication, and inform you, a spouse, guardian, or teacher about the incident right away.
- use inappropriate language or send mean messages online.
Make sure that you DO:
- make a concerted effort to understand the types of technology that your child is using and try keep up-to-date on what is going on in the world of computers. You just do not want your children to get too ahead of you.
For further information, you can check out the following:
- Software for Parents – site specializes in parental control software reviews.
- Safe Teens – a web safety resource site for teens.
- Get Net Wise – a how-to resource to help kids have a safe, entertaining and educational learning Internet experience.
- Cyber Angels – site of the largest online safety advocacy group.
- Bernstain Bears – a cool interactive game featuring those Berenstain bears that teaches young children about Internet safety.
Software Filtering Solutions
- Setting online access times for individual users;
- Customizing filtering criterion for each member of the family;
- Controlling the specific use of words and phrases;
- Preventing personal information, including credit card numbers, from the Internet; and,
The only difference between each software package seems to be the price and maybe some added capabilities.
Parental Filtering Software for Home
Net Nanny 5.1:
- Purchased online/person at: Office Depot, Staples, Best Buy or Futureshop.
- Cost: $40.00
- Free 15 day no obligation product trial. Click here to download.
- Offers: customized warning messages and violation actions and computerized logs and records of all online chat sessions.
- Purchased online at: CyberPatrol Site
- Cost: $50 for one year license or $75 for two year license.
- Free 14 day no obligation product trial. Click here to download.
- Offers: monitoring/logging of all Internet Activity; control dowloads, block sites and images; filtering of chat applications; blocking of descriptive search engine results; and, unique “Try It” feature that allows you to try and evaluate your customized settings before the kids go online.
Software solutions are not restricted to just home users; a lot of enterprises have adopted similar types of internet monitoring and surveillance software to monitor their own employees. So, if you are not just a concerned parent but an entrepreneur concerned about company resources such as the company e-mail and computer system, being used for personal use, you can probably consider implementing a similar software solution such as the one by SpectorSoft.
- Purchase online at SpectorSoft site.
- Cost: $120.00
This program is considered to be the grand-daddy of Internet Surveillance and Monitoring Software. It allows the users of the program to screen capture and record virtually all computer related activities including e-mail, instant messages, chat and other message logs that can be viewed minutes or days later. Best of all, the targetted computer users will not even know the software is installed.
Other Features:
- Restrict application uses;
- Keyword violation with immediate e-mail notification;
- Schedule when to record usage; and,
- Record by individual profiles or users.
Kid Friendly Browsers:
Alternatively, if you have some younger children, you may want to consider using a kid-friendly browser instead of letting them use Internet Explorer or Netscape Communicator. Like any browser, young children will have the same benefits of e-mail, chatting, information and everything in between in a safe and fun environment. Most of the browsers do the following:
- Time Control that limits access to the Internet;
- Internet content filtering;
- Activity logs;
- Customizable browser interface; and,
- Parental control and customizations on certain functions depending on the product.
AT Kids Browser – Cost: $29.95 USD, free trial available for download. Additional features: animated characters, and multilinqual capabilities.
If you are a subscriber to any of Shaw Cable’s Internet Services, you can access, free of charge, Shaw Secure Internet Security package. This software includes: parental control software. You can register and sign up for the software by clicking here.
If you are a subscriber of Telus’ High Speed Internet Services, you will have to pay an additional $8.95 per month to get the equivalent software package.
If you do not want to spend the money or are not very good at installing software on the computer, you can, if you have Internet Explorer 6 (or the latest version), setup the built-in content filtering feature by:
- Going to the Tools menu in Internet Explorer;
- Select Internet Options;
- Select the Contents Tab;
- Under Content Advisor, select Enable;
- Under the Ratings tab, select appropriate category language, nudity, sex, or violence and move the tolerance slider up.
- Under the Approved Sites tab, you can simply type in the sites that you deem viewable or not viewable regardless of tolerance ratings.
- Remember to go the General Tab to set a supervisor password, so no one but you can tamper with the settings.
Given the level of technological savvy in kids today, many of them could probably circumvent some of the filtering software that mom, dad, or the teacher could put in place. So, next to completely banning the child from the web, which in itself may prove to be a futile exercise, a complete software solution is, probably, out of the question. The best possible solution seems to be something between parental set usage policy and guidelines and software monitoring. The level of required monitoring really depends on the parent, guardian, and to a certain extent the child.
Well, until next time,
~Geekboy
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, feel free to drop me an e-mail at: gb.technobytes@gmail.com
Posted by Geekboy 
TECHNOBYTES 