How many of us have children that use the internet regularly? My children spend half their lives on there whether it be Facebook and Twitter for the older ones or Moshi Monsters and Club Penguin for the younger two. Then there is google and other search engines that they use to help do their homework. Two of the children have to log in to certain websites to do their homework and another has to send his homework via the internet to his teachers. This is a lot of exposure which could lead to vulnerability if they are not taught how to stay safe on the internet.
To help make us all aware and proactive about the online danger, yesterday, February 7th, was Internet Safety Day.
There are simple tasks that we can all do to protect ourselves and more importantly our children who are vulnerable to online grooming and cyber bullying. Apparently the biggest growing risk is the use of webcams in exploiting children. First step…disable all webcams on any computers that your children have access to.
Microsoft has partnered with CEOP (Child Exploitation Online Protection) and produced a customised browser to enable our children easy one click access to online help and support if they feel in danger for any reason. With the aid of Internet Explorer 9 the website can be the chosen browser when your children are online so that any questions they may have or if they need to alert the relevant authorities that they are being bullied, exposed to something they shouldn’t be or are in immediate danger the help is there at the touch of a button.
Internet Explorer 9 also enables a parent to control what their child is or isn’t allowed to do online down to banning certain sites completely or restricting their use. This is also available with other operating systems.
I attended a talk given by representatives of CEOP and Microsoft and I was interested to learn that each child should be given their own user name on the computer, along with a password this makes it easier to control what children are potentially exposed to. However remember that nothing is infallible and care and as much supervision as posible should always be taken. It is worth checking out the informative Thinkuknow website for more advice and age relevant tips.
From my personal point of view I also remind the children that anything we put out there either in emails, on Facebook, Twitter etc is there for all to see leaving a digital footprint that is virtually impossible to remove and that they should never say anything that they wouldn’t out loud in person…
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