Evil-Kids-OnlineThere are plenty of options out there to try to keep your kids from getting into bad things online. I just wish more parents would utilize them. Its funny, if you have a child that is about 14-15 years of age and younger, you should have some type of parental control on the family computer. Real parental control, not just separate windows logins. You need software that monitors and restricts usage.

I use to not be a believer in that type of restriction, but recently Ive seen real life situations that put a different perspective on things. Those real life situations that I have witnessed made me realize how crazy it is to not have some protection for your little ones. Keep your kids safe online. Parental software is just as important as having antivirus software on a family PC.

Keeping your kids safe online goes beyond child predators. Whenever people talk about keeping kids safe, thats the automatic thinking, "keeping perverts away from my kids". Dont get me wrong, that is important, really important. but that is only a portion of the protection kids need when they are online. A bigger issue, well maybe not bigger, but a very large issue is keeping kids safe from themselves.

Dont let your kids grow up to be perverts themselves.

Sometimes, its the kids themselves that are the predators, sometimes they are the adult predators. What are your kids saying when they are sneaking to use the PC when the rest of the family is sleep? Why does your daughter’s Myspace profile say he is 17 when she’s 13? What are they looking at? What are they chatting about? It is pretty easy to type in one or two words in a search engine and get some of the worst graphic porn, the likes that no child should be exposed too. What does that do to a 10-13 year old?

There is plenty of software out there, so many that it gets confusing. Especially since there isn’t really any flagship parental software and most seem to appear second rate. The main thing is that you need to make sure that the solution that you choose have certain features.

Website Blocking

  • This is the no brainer, you need to be able to block websites. The more configurable it is, the better. You want to be able to add URLs as you see fit. It would also be nice to have the ability to block by keywords and phrases, for searches. You also want to have the option to "whitelist" URLs in case some website that you find to be ok, is being blocked by the filters and you want to give that individual site a pass.

Time Restriction

  • There are 2 times you can pretty much guarantee that your kids will do things they shouldn’t be doing online. If they are home alone, and if they wake up once you go to sleep (or wait for you to go to sleep). Time restrictions seem to be a mute point for most, but putting a internet cutoff time of about 10:30 or 11pm is a good idea. That way, even if your kids wait till you go to sleep and sneak back to the computer, they wouldn’t be able to get online to get into anything.

Chat and Email monitoring

  • Ok let me be clear about this, when I say monitoring, I mean you want to see what is typed. If your daughter is acting like the town slut inappropriate, you want to know so you can put a stop to it.

Real Time Alerts

  • Alerts are good because it can be that middle ground between snooping and being cautious. Instead of you sitting there reading through all of your child’s email, or sifting through all of the logs to know every little single thing that he or she does, it would be nice if to have software that give you an alert when something is violated. as with the website blocking, the more configurable the better. Some software will give you alerts if certain things are typed in chat or email, if certain websites are trying to be accessed, certain programs are trying to be launched etc. Depending on the software, the alerts can be anything from a simple email to a text message or phone call. Getting the alerts in real time is the ideal solution if it is offered.

Separate but configurable rules for different users.

  • Lets say you have a 12 year old, a 17 yea old and yourself (an adult). Of coarse your not going to want to be restricted when you use the computer. Your 17 year old isnt going to have as many restrictions as your 12 year old. You want to make sure that you can have different rules for each user. I would think this is pretty common but you never know.

Remote monitoring

  • Most of these parental control software solutions are adjusted and viewed on the computer in which it is installed. Having software that can be accessed remotely is a good idea. If you’re at work and get an alert that your child is doing something bad, being able to go online and see what he or she was doing up until the point you got the alert, and changing the rules to restrict even further, or in some cases allow something, without having to wait till you get home would be great.

 

Where do you find software that does all of those things? There are a few but the one I like goes by the name Safe Eyes. Safe Eyes 5.0 has most of the features I mention above. Another you can check out is Advance Parental Control. If all else fail and you don’t know what to buy, you can always go for the good ole fashion NetNanny software, which is decent.