Archive for the ‘parental controls’ Category
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
My children are starting young playing online games. My five year-old can now log in to a childrens’ website and successfully negotiate some of the games. I am already anticipating how computer savvy he will be by the time he reaches puberty. Some of the things I try to communicate to my older kids when playing online games is that they are often interacting with strangers, and we cannot see who that person is. Therefore, it’s crucial for them to be careful about remembering a form of “stranger danger” with these so-called online friends. No matter how long you’ve been playing the game with that person, or how friendly they seem to present themselves, not everyone you meet online is who they say they are. One thing we communicate as absolutely off limits is making arrangements to meet anyone online. There are plenty of opportunities to make friends at school or in our neighborhood, and they are spending way too much time on the computer if these relationships are being neglected. They are also not allowed to give out their real name, address, phone number, or are allowed to call anyone else (everyone has caller i.d. these days). If someone is acting aggressive or is pushing them for personal information, they are instructed to let me know — I will help them take steps to block that player or report them to the website that is hosting the games. Keep records if possible to identify problem people.
Tags: internet safety, online games, parental controls
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Tuesday, January 12th, 2010
Chat rooms are a common social component among teenagers. Generally set up according to a specific subject, like a TV show, celebrity, or sport, teens can get together with other like-minded people in their peer group. Sounds like a great idea at first glance; however, chat rooms can pose dangers. For instance, not all friends in chat rooms are who they say they are. Your teen may be interacting with an adult skilled at exploitation for financial or sexual gain by extracting personal information from their online acquaintances. One tactic is to persuade teens to telephone them since many teens have been taught not to give out personal information. Now the predator has their home phone number from the caller ID.
Look for warning signs that your child might be exploited. Behaviors include excessive hours online, especially late night; turning computer off suddenly when you walk into the room; evasiveness and withdrawal; calls from strangers; or gifts mailed to your child. The internet is a great tool for learning and exploring our world. By taking an active role in your teens’ internet usage, they can reap the benefits while minimizing the risks.
Tags: chat rooms, internet safety
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Friday, December 18th, 2009
A federal law was passed in 1998 called the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) which placed significant restrictions on the personal information which websites could gather from children under the age of 13 years old. Information gathering was allowed only if the parent or guardian gave verified consent to the website. Additionally, this law enacted restrictions around online marketing to children in this age group. While this certainly is a step in the right direction regarding the protection of our most precious resource, our children, parents still need to be proactive in supervising their kids online. Start by talking to your children about the possible dangers that exist in cyber world. Enact rules around computer usage designed to enhance internet safety. Use of protection tools can be a great way to block unwanted content from your child’s computer. There is also software available which tracks online activity.
The internet is an excellent resource for children, whether interacting with teachers and friends, gathering information for school assignments, or playing online games. Every effort should be made to protect them from predators as they explore their world.
Tags: internet safety, parental controls
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Sunday, September 14th, 2008
When we had cable internet service, every little rain would make the service fall offline. Then it was call the service people out, wait around all day for them to arrive, and hope that they would be able to fix it, which they often were not, in which case we then had to set up a second appointment, wait some more and hope for the best. Living in Florida and dealing with afternoon rains all summer, to say nothing of the rains created by wandering hurricanes, we were without internet service quite often when we had cable internet. Now that we have Verizon Internet Service, however, rain or shine, we’ve had no trouble with outages. With better service added to the lower monthly cost of Verizon, there’s just no comparison.
Tags: DSL, high speed internet providers, internet providers, verizon, Verizon Internet
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Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
Control and limit the access your child has to high speed internet by clicking on your kid’s account in “Parental Controls.” Under “Communication” click on “Messenger Access.” Change the setting to “Restricted Access.” If your kids want to add new contacts, they have to ask permission first. This allows parents to know exactly who is on their kid’s list of chat buddies. Why is this so important? Because you want to know exactly who your kids hang out with. It doesn’t matter if it is at school, at the mall, at the park or online, the people you surround yourself have an influence on you and your children.
Tags: broadband, faster ISP, high speed internet
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Wednesday, April 9th, 2008
Your current broadband service may not have what it takes to protect your kids online. Did you know iTunes accesses the net in ways a browser does and could potentially access music that is not appropriate for young people. The next series will focus on what to do with iTunes to safeguard your children in addition to what you should already be doing with software and your high speed internet service providers. Stay tuned!
Tags: configurations, DSL, isp, iTunes
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Thursday, March 6th, 2008
Is your PC running at its full speed potential when trying to access the internet? Most of us don’t take the time to understand the technical ins and outs of your computer and as a result we are not able to optimize its speed. You see, both windows 2000 and XP where built on NT technology. In simple words, NT was basically created for internal networking purposes, not necessarily optimized for connecting to your high speed internet provider. It is a more stable platform than what we had before NT technology was introduced, but you would need to reconfigure some settings to get the maximum use of your PC.
Tags: configuring your PC, high speed, internet
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Monday, March 3rd, 2008
Another good way to reduce the risk of your children running into unwanted material is by configuring the settings on your ISP. Almost all internet providers offer some form of parental controls, some free some for a small charge, so be sure to take this into consideration when choosing a high speed internet provider. It really does not matter if you are thinking of DSL providers like att yahoo dsl & verizon or cable providers like comcast, the security level is basically the same and the more advanced programs will even give you a full report of the sites each user has been visiting. Read more on the page post on the right titled Protecting your children with high speed internet providers’ parental controls. This should get you started in the right direction.
Tags: Configuring your ISP, high speed internet providers
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Saturday, March 1st, 2008
For ultimate parental control be sure to configure your PC correctly. Doing so will greatly reduce the odds of your children running into unwanted content on the internet as well as restrict what they can and cannot do with the computer. It is important that we as parents take the time to understand the terminology and take advantage of the tools and features that already come loaded on your PC. It will make a big difference in the type of information they are able to access.
You also want to make sure and have a user id and login for each individual user in your family. This helps because you can tailor the level of security depending on their age. Don’t delay get started by going to the User Accounts and Family Safety Section in the Control Panel.
Tags: isp, PC Configuration
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Friday, February 22nd, 2008
Did you know that your kids can easily buy tobacco over the net? This is a bigger issue than I was aware of. I recently saw some articles on the net about kids as young as 11 purchasing tobacco over the net. Online tobacco shops do not have to go out of their way to “verify” someones age. They can get away with a simple disclaimer. Remember the days when kids could get cigarettes from the old vending machines. Well it is the same sort of thing here except with vending the responsibility fell in the hands of the establishment where the machine resided. On the net, the ultimate responsibility lies in the hands of the parents. Good education, values, and supervision can make the difference. So get started today and get involved in what your children do online.
Tags: high speed internet, parental responsibilty
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Wednesday, January 30th, 2008
Enhance your parental control settings by configuring your browser on top of your high speed internet providers’ software. While your ISP’s software is a good start, you need to also setup your browser for ultimate protection. Before getting started be sure to create a login for each user on your PC under the control panel. This way your settings will take effect for each particular user. It is a very good idea to get familiar with the terminology and setting in the Security section of your browser. For full details on how to do this, look at the Configuring Your Browser page to the right.
Tags: high speed internet providers, parental controls
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Thursday, January 24th, 2008
One of the best resources i have found on the net to become familiar with the world of parental controls is wikipedia.org. Their parental controls definition helps you understand the complexity of what parents are facing. Technology is so advanced that your children will most likely out tech you by the age of 14. So now you not only have to keep up with the latest methods of protecting your child with parental control devices, but you also have to keep up with technology so they don’t out flank you.
Tags: parental controls wikipedia
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Wednesday, January 16th, 2008
While most high speed internet providers have parental controls the real question is how much and how good are they. In this day and age we can never be too careful and assume our children will never do any mischief.
I really don’t remember what I was up to at the tender age of 4, but my little boy has already mastered the use of the keyboard and mouse. But for now, I mainly let him use games and software that are OFF line vs. let him loose to surf the web.
When I’m sitting with him we venture online to google images so he can see pictures of his favorite things. My tip for the day — when you are on google, there is a link on the right side of the search box called Preferences. Once inside, scroll down to the Safe Search Filtering section and select the first option that offers the strictest filter to avoid explicit material. Save preferences at the bottom and you are on your way to a safer surfing experience.
Tags: high speed internet providers, parental controls
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Monday, January 14th, 2008
Welcome to webalem.org, your source for the latest information about parental controls on your PC, Browser, and what is available from your high speed internet providers. As the internet grows with information, unfortunately it also grows with inappropriate content. In an effort to know how to protect my children from certain things on the net, I decided to start a blog and report my findings to the world.
Remember that there is no substitute for parental supervision. So be proactive and visit our site to see how the top high speed internet providers are safeguarding your children and what parental control tools are available to you.
Tags: high speed internet providers, parental control
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