4 Steps to help keep your Children safe online

1. Place the computer in an open area of the home – computer time becomes a family activity. If the screen is easily visible, your children will be much more hesitant to do activities that can be considered questionable.

2. Develop and discuss a set of rules for online activity – by thoroughly discussing what types of activities you feel are inappropriate for computer use, you children will already know what they should or should not do. Create a pledge with what activities they will or will not do and have them sign it.

3. Pay attention to what your children are doing online – check the browsing and recent page accessed history, unfortunately, this activity be easily erased if your children know how. If that is the case, you may want to install web filtering and monitoring software. A web filter will run in the background and not be detected (unless you child tries to access a page that you have deemed inappropriate, such as adult or violence). Reporting from the web filtering software will be password protected so you children aren’t able to erase or access it. Web filtering software will also protect from accessing web sites that have online threats like malware and viruses to keep your computer free from infection.

4. Educate yourself and share your knowledge – this could be the most important step. If you are aware of the dangers online (viruses, online predators, social media threats, etc.) you will be able to have educated discussions with your children about Internet safely and why they need to be careful with who they talk to and what information they share. Tools like web filtering and anti-virus software can aid a parent but aren’t the silver bullet for protection, good parenting and education is the key.

Surf safely!!