As the school year began for my kids, I received a form from our school district that would let me opt out of allowing my children to have Internet access from their school computers. Like many schools, ours block access to certain websites that may reveal a child’s identity, or have prurient or other inappropriate content for children. Plenty of parents worry about what their children are exposed to on the Web, and for good reason.
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The Federal Trade Commission recently put together an excellent program for keeping kids safe online. Their brochure, “Net Cetera – Chatting with Kids About Being Online,” is available free from the FTC by visiting their OnGuard Online website. Hard copies are also available for schools.
The Net Cetera brochure is chock full of a good advice for parents and caregivers. "We wrote Net Cetera to encourage parents to communicate their own values to their kids," said Carolyn Shanoff, director of consumer and business education for the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "When parents are upfront about their values and how they apply in the online world, kids are more likely to make thoughtful decisions when they face tricky situations." Here are just some of the tips:
• Talk to your kids as soon as they start using a computer, cell phone, or any other mobile device. Explain about the dangers of Internet use, perhaps by discussing news stories about cyber bullying and the like.
• Keep the computer in a common area of your home, not a private one, so your child is cognizant of potential parental supervision while she surfs the Web.
• Check the sites your children are visiting to make sure they’re appropriate, and review the sites’ privacy policies. Find out what information a website wants from your child; websites are required to get parental authorization to collect personal information on a child.
• Review your child’s friends list on social networking sites, and have her "friend" you so you can see who she is communicating with.
• Set the parental controls on the computer to filter out inappropriate websites, and privacy settings to restrict who can access and post on your child’s social media profile.
• Explain to your kids why they should post only information that they are comfortable with others seeing. Discuss how their electronic communications leave “footprints” that can’t be erased.
• Talks to your teen about avoiding sex talk online, and the perils of “sexting.”
• Have your kids create safe screen names that can’t be used to identify who they are or where they are located.
• Have them create strong e-mail passwords and have them share those passwords with you.
• Know your rights. You have the right to demand that personal information on your child be removed from any website.
Consumers Reports has produced a video on Internet safety for kids that is being shown by major retailers. To view the video click here.
Consumer Reports keeps an eye on the latest digital security news and has also tested and rated Internet security software and reports on Internet security risks frequently. Ratings, and advice are available on our Internet safety hub (Ratings are available for subscribers only).
—Don Mays
The bottom line is that if parents REALLY want to keep their kids safe online, they need to know what they are doing on the computer, and what is happening in their online lives. Blocks and filters are easy to get around, and talking alone will get you nowhere… (if you think your kids are going to tell you, honestly, everything they are doing online – you are only kidding yourself). Education is a great thing, and very necessary, but how can you consider yourself educated if you don’t know the simplest information – like what your kids are really doing on the Internet to begin with. If you have monitoring software, like our PC Pandora (http://www.pcpandora.com), you will know everything they do and will be able to talk to them about it. If you aren’t monitoring and don’t know what they are really doing, how can you be sure they are safe? It’s not an issue of privacy (I have no idea where and when kids were granted endless privacy because they exist – in my day privacy was earned through trust and an established good behavior record), nor is it an issue of trust – it’s called being a 21st century parent. If you don’t know what your kids are doing online, you aren’t doing your job as a parent. If you aren’t monitoring what your kids do online and watch them, someone else will…
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