Internet Safety Tips For Teens & Parents - Filters & Monitoring Software
Home > Misc Activities > Internet Safety Tips The big problem with internet filters is that they can not think. Rather, they can only sift through the textual information included with a given web page, video, or image. For example, if you visit my sample page and video showing how badly filters fail, you will see that a filter provides a very false sense of protection! My sample page shows that a video or image that is explicit in nature is only detected if the author or publisher chooses to label it as such with text titles and tags. (Don't worry, the sample items I have only feature text with no slang terms, not images) There is no such thing (yet) as a filter that has the ability to recognize and identify individual images or videos as being explicit. If you are lucky, the internet filter will block the page that the image or video is on because of other text on the page that triggers the filter. Do you want to rely on luck? Filters can't think, they can only read words. I have tried a lot of different approaches to internet safety, but the only sure way to guarantee safety is to use software that only allows hand-picked sites to be accessed. One of the best commercial filters that allows this option currently is BSecure. This filter allows a whitelist of sites only, but also if your child must access many different sites for school and a whitelist is not practical, Bsecure will keep track of the domains your child accesses and you can adjust the filter online from any computer! We have Bsecure on my oldest son's computer since he must visit a large variety of sites. It is working very well and serves as both a filter and a monitoring device. Did you know that you can set up the same type of "White List" for free if you have Windows Vista? You simply set up users accounts for family members and then implement the Parental Controls to allow access for Allowed Sites only. And you designate the sites. I have set up a step by step tutorial on how to do this - see Setting Up White List Internet Filter on Windows Vista. Do you have Windows 7? If so, you must create a Windows Live Family Safety account and need a hotmail email (this is free) in order to create a whitelist. For more info, see http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Protecting-your-kids-with-Family-Safety. Here are some good guidelines for keeping your children from viewing objectionable internet sites:
If you have CyberPatrol, see Setting up the CyberPatrol Yes List for instructions on how to set up their whitelist. Copyright 2005 - Michael Sakowski - More Info | Contact Info | Privacy Statement |