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Protecting Your Kids Online

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Among the biggest reasons for PC security product purchases is a worry for the child’s safety whilst surfing online, and it’s easy to see why. There are many dangers associated with children using the internet, mainly due to their naivety and lack of experience with the online world. It is not an ideal way to fully block the kid from using a computer to surf the internet, it can be a terrific tool for them to use. By way of instance, they probably use the internet to check out homework assignments or contact their peers, as well as the wealth of knowledge available on the internet.

What risks to children face online? It’s commonplace to hear stories of kids falling for predatory criminals pretending for a kid their age: you have probably heard them on the news several times. In addition to the criminal risks, parents are often concerned about their child seeing images and websites meant for adults, or even simply using social media as they don’t display content for younger viewers.

How do you protect your child from being affected by these problems? Fortunately, you have a whole lot of options. The first and most obvious choice is to prevent them from using a computer, however, as mentioned previously, this is not a wonderful idea as the world today revolves around computer use, even to the point where it is part of a child’s compulsory school program. Another choice is to supervise your child any time they’re using a computer, which is a terrific idea for young children as their internet usage is very likely to only ever be whilst you’re around. Sadly, the situation for older kids is not so easy thanks to smartphones. According to a survey performed in 2013, 56 percent of children aged 10 to 13 have a smartphone (the amount is very likely to have improved significantly in the years since). In cases like this, you want to take more of a ‘blanket’ approach, a fantastic example of which is using parental controls supplied by internet providers. By utilizing these tools, you can allow access to specific sites only whilst on wifi. Parental controls often include their own whitelist of websites that are safe for children, the simplest choice is to use this to limit your child’s browsing access.

Wifi is not the only way you can link to the internet, so you will have to look at safeguarding your children whilst using cellular internet, otherwise, your child could simply turn off their wifi and see any website they like. Mobile providers also offer parental controls, but they’re hardly ever as precise as ISP parental controls. You will discover that you can just block access to 18+ websites, which renders the vast majority of the website which are not secure for under 13s accessible. There isn’t much you can do to stop your child accessing these websites whilst out of your oversight, so the best way to protect them from online dangers is via good-old education.