|
Parents, Know What your Child is doing on the Internet By Jeremy Robertson |
|
1st let me start off by saying that as the parent you should be the boss of the computer just like in the home. Being the boss you are the administrator of the pc. You should only set yourself as the administrator and password protect your account. Set the children as limited accounts. As the administrator you can limit what the limited account can do as well as view all files and folders under the users account. This step will also save you money and frustration. As a technician people often ask me what the most common problem is with a pc, and I have to answer teenagers! They tend to try to view smutty sites, and download games and visit sites that invite malware.
It is your job as parents to protect your kids from danger. You would not let your child swim in shark infested water would you? Believe it or not that’s what you’re doing when you give your child unsupervised access to the internet. I would like to show you some ways that your child can be monitored and protected from predators. With great power great responsibility, please use the information in this document wisely. Should you find something make sure you pick your battle wisely, I don’t recommend going off half cocked. Investigate the findings, think hard about your responses and make an intelligent decision on the actions you take.
The obvious stuff is of course the browser history. Your browser keeps a history of websites for a predetermined amount of time and it is easy to browse that history and see where your child has been surfing on the internet. If you take my advice from earlier about setting them as a limited account even if they password protect their profile you can remove their password from your admin account. Then you can go in and see their email, files, history ECT. Most kids today are more computer savvy then the parents due to the fact that they have been around them all their life, so you as a parent have to be sneaky and kind of know your Childs skill level when it comes to the workings of the pc. They may be able to easily undo anything you do if they are not limited by you the administrator.
Today a lot of parents are giving their children computers in their rooms or laptops, the kid has free run on that pc, and that’s fine they need their pc for school and it is a wonderful link to the rest of the world but gain the problem is they are completely UN supervised. There are a couple of programs I want to let you know about.
1. ICU Insight into your Children’s unaccompanied activityThis program is free and will let you monitor your child without them even knowing they are being checked up on. For more information visit their web site http://www.icu-software.co.uk/child-monitoring-software.aspx
2. IMMonitor, No Trial Period Limit, Free version can monitor 3 stations.This program is great if you have high speed internet using a router for all the computers in the house as they are networked, to share that internet connection and it will look at the traffic from other computers on the network from your bedroom or den. Very sneaky, if you catch my drift.
One way children are in danger from online predators is online chat programs such as yahoo messenger, ICQ, Messenger, ECT. Most chat clients have a chat log in the program but you have to turn it on inside the account and your child can turn it off pretty easy. So I recommend a program called Chat Watch. It is software by Zemericks and it monitors and records all major chat programs. Check out chatwatch5 it is not free but is cheap and besides can you put a price on your child’s safety?
There are lots of other ways your child can be in grave danger on the internet. E-mail, websites, ECT. Not monitoring your child’s activity on their computer is not only dangerous but can be costly so I hope this document helps you parents protect your child. If my tech doc saves one child from an online predator then it was worth every second it took to research and write it.
Jeremy M. Robertson |