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Giving parents the tools and resources they need to keep their kids safe online. Free guides, how-to's and resources to help parents deal with myspace and online predators.
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Internet child safety, our #1 concern.
Giving parents the edge in a tech savvy teen world!
What do you do about your child's myspace account. Here are a few tips:
With your monitoring program you can log all sites visited, track all computer usage, limit their time online, block myspace, block porn sites, block bad words,images and more. See our tips on what to look for in a good monitoring program.
Your key logger is your lifeline to catching a predator chatting with your Internet kid. Your key logger will log ALL keystrokes typed on your computer and most will also log the other side of the conversation as well. My logs are emailed to me daily. Usually, I just scan them, but when I notice behaviour problems, or see an attitude change with my child, I will monitor the logs closely. I am not embarrassed to say, it has paid off more than once. Although, not necessarily in a way that I have had to directly confront my child. Most of the time, I can handle the issue by simply bringing it up in casual conversation.
"Amy's Choice"
Hear the true story of a 15-year-old girl who left home to meet in person with a man she first "met" online. Read "Amy's Story" — the story from her mother's perspective.
| Online Dangers | Links
7 Steps to a safer Internet.
- Set Google to use strict filtering (this will stop most inappropriate images and text from showing up in your search results)
- Install Mcaffe's free SiteAdvisor (this is a great tool to warn you of potentially dangerous web sites)
- Install a good blocking\monitoring program. Spector Pro is one of the best and is reasonably priced.
- Install virus protection a few good ones are Mcaffe, Norton's or
(my choice)
- Use the parents\child Internet contract to setup rules and guidelines.
- Install Spybot Search & Destroy (link below) this is a free utility that will help with spyware removal and detection.
- Be aware, review the logs, checkup on your child's social networking site regularly.
The first thing you need to do is review their Myspace site, or other social networking site with them.
When you review your kids internet site, here are a few things to look for:
- What's their site name? (names like Hottie123, blondncute, almostlegal17 etc. are big no-no's) (kids in our local school are using cartoon characters for names)
- What's their screen or login name? (for myspace it's their email, other sites might use something else)
- What personal information are they giving out? (school, names, city, phone#, email etc..)
- Review their site for language you disapprove of.
- Ask to see all the pictures they have posted (assuming they have)
- Look at their friends and the comments they have posted. (who's in their top 8?)
- Click on their friends links or pictures to visit their site, is it appropriate?
- You will have to spend some time on their site and really go over it to see if it's acceptable to you.
If you decide to let them keep their myspace account then we highly recommend that you review their site regularly. These kids tend to change their sites a lot and receive posts throughout the day.
It can be fun for the kids if it's done right and you supervise and lay down the law. Just remember, you really cannot let your guard down, predators are browsing these teen social networking sites
24\7 "fishing" for kids. See the Internet family browsing contract for the basics on Internet safety, read our Internet safety guide for parents and remember, Internet safety starts at home.
The attorneys general of all 50 states have joined forces to pressure MySpace, Facebook Inc. and other Internet social-networking sites to put in place greater parental controls and age-verification tools so minors can't access the sites so easily.