Internet Safety Rules For Parents
learn how to keep children safe on the Internet.
Find the tools that a parent needs to supervise and keep children and teenagers safe on the internet.
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Trouble Areas
for kIDS
tHESE ACTIVITIES NEED ADULT SUPERVISION.
INTERNET SAFETY RULES
"The Court previously took judicial notice that every computer is manufactured with an on/off switch, that parents may utilize, in the end, to control the information which comes into their home via the Internet."
~ Judge Arthur J. Tarnow, in Cyberspace v. Engler
Strategic Objectives" for children's online safety:
Kids are taught to "manage their own online behavior." In other words, by teaching our children respect, civility and citizenship online as well as off, we improve their chances for safe, constructive, and productive use of the Net and mobile phones.
- "Reduce availability [of harmful contact and contact to online kids] ... and the conduciveness of platforms to harmful and inappropriate conduct"
- "Restrict access ... and reduce ... harmful and inappropriate conduct"
- "Increase resilience: Equip children to deal with exposure to harmful and inappropriate content and contact, and equip parents to help their children deal with these things and parent effectively around incidences of harmful and inappropriate conduct by their children.
In many families, these problems are solved with good parenting skills, and establishing trust and limits. But even strong parents could use some technological help.
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HOUSE RULES FOR PARENTS:
LEARN HOW TO KEEP YOUR CHILD SAFE ON THE INTERNET
The bottom line is that your kids do NOT have a right to privacy when it comes to internet or computer use, and you as a parent have a right and a responsibility to see to it that they're not getting into anything they shouldn't be getting into.
If it's illegal offline, it's illegal on the Web. Children from 0 - 16 are entitled to exactly as much privacy as they can safely handle. In the case of the Internet, that means none. Children should be told up front that their communications will be monitored on an ongoing basis. This is a condition of their use of the Internet. If they don't like it, they can find something else to do with their time.
Parents need to know where their children are, who they are hanging out with at all times. The internet is the same as mall or anwhere else on earth. Parents are allowed to know where their child is on the internet and what they are doing there. And it's pretty easy to keep them in line, because the alternative for them is to not be permitted to use your machine -- end of story.
Services that help parents protect children's privacy online are SafetyWeb and SocialShield.
Too many parents are afraid to take control of their child's computer. They're afraid of their kids. They somehow think because technology is involved, they're no longer the parent. You're the parent. If you don't like it, unplug the computer. If they don't follow your rules, no Internet at all. If you're not the parent and if you're not going to step in, no Web site on earth is going to be able to help your child be safe.
USE FIREFOX BROWSER
Try Googling "evercookie" you'd be really surprised An evercookie is a persistent cookie that uses numerous clever techniques to avoid full deletion by the user. Think of it as a "super-cookie" that can be used to track your online activities even though you have taken steps to protect yourself, and you think you are protected against tracking. Using Safari's private browsing mode defeats the evercookie system and prevents evercookies from being used between browsing sessions. On first glance, it appears that Chrome's Incognito scheme will make you safe from evercookies.
LeechBlock
is a simple productivity tool designed to block those time-wasting sites that can suck the life out of your working day. (You know: the ones that rhyme with 'Blue Cube', 'Pie Face', 'Space Hook', 'Hash Pot', 'Sticky Media', and the like.) All you need to do is specify which sites to block and when to block them.
You can specify up to six sets of sites to block, with different times and days for each set. You can block sites within fixed time periods (e.g., between 9am and 5pm), after a time limit (e.g., 10 minutes in every hour), or with a combination of time periods and time limit (e.g., 10 minutes in every hour between 9am and 5pm). You can also set a password for access to the extension options, just to slow you down in moments of weakness!
BetterPrivacy
Better Privacy serves to protect against not deletable longterm cookies, a new generation of 'Super-Cookie', which silently conquered the internet. This new cookie generation offers unlimited user tracking to industry and market research. Concerning privacy Flash- and DOM Storage objects are most critical.
This addon was made to make users aware of those hidden, never expiring objects and to offer an easy way to get rid of them - since browsers are unable to do that for you. Flash-cookies (Local Shared Objects, LSO) are pieces of information placed on your computer by a Flash plugin. Those Super-Cookies are placed in central system folders and so protected from deletion.
- http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/features/parental-controls
- http://parentalcontrols.aol.com
- http://www.google.com/safesearch_help.html
- http://www.att.com/safety
- http://security.comcast.net/get-smart/protect-your-family/parental-controls.aspx
- http://www.verizon.net/parentalcontrol
Take computers out of the bedrooms and put them in the living room or where the parents are. Mobile phones and interactive consoles should also be kept downstairs in case they contain viruses.
- Internet Party: When Google's parents leave town where kids go and get in trouble
- INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL NETWORKS
- Great places to take the kids where you should go with the kids
- Call US bilingual toll-free hotline 1.888.638.7411 with questions about topics such as social networking, cellphone texting, and virtual worlds.
- Video, with "common sense tips and rules for families" and companion print and Web materials, a joint project of CommonSenseMedia.org
- What Real People & Real Computers really act like vs. what you see in the Movies
- Virginia is the first US state to require online-safety instruction in its public schools.
- WAIT I thought YOU were in charge of Security?
LEARN THE INTERNET RULES 10 TIPS FOR SAFE SURFING
- Discover the internet Together
- Agree to the rules for internet use
- Encourage your child to be careful when disclosing personal information.
- Talk about the risks of meeting an online friend face to face
- Teach your child to be critical of online sources
- Parents please sit down with your kids at the computer and teach them to recognize ads.
- Remember, the computer is like TV. Is everything on your TV appropriate for your child? Teach them to be aware of all media.
- Empowerment & Convergence Dialogue
Look at a Ratings chart that will tell Parents how to use the warning labels and what they look like to give them the tools to decide if their child is old enough to be using/buying the product. Full Guide - Don't be too critical of your child's web browsing
- Report illegal online material to the police
- Encourage good Netiquette
- Know your children's net use
- Remember that the positive aspects of the internet outweigh the negatives.
Jakob Nielsen released “Usability of Websites for Children,” debunks a number of myths about how children (ages 5-11) navigate through sites. Summary:
- Kids aren't naturally skillful on computers.
- Kids are literal thinkers, they won't scroll down the page. It's “out of sight, out of mind.”
- Kids get more confused than their parents becuase they actually read directions.
- Learning is their job and they are only willing to read a paragraph or so.
- Kids don't distinguish between ads and content. To them, it's all information.
- Kids click on ad banners all the time.
- Kids ignore error messages and go someplace else.
- Sights are easier to use when they have highest degree of compliance with standard guidelines for Web usability.
- kids resist attempts to get personal information, are aware of privacy issues, and that they shouldn't give out their name or phone number.
Kids sites are hard to use when:
- Designers make controls too complicated
- interface is too busy
- confusing vocabulary describing options
- everything was dumbed down for kids which wasn't necessary