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Overview of Online Safety Rules for Families:

Teach your children to never give personal information over the Internet, such as name, home address, telephone number, cell number, password, parents' names, the name of any club or sports team he/she is involved in, name of his/her school, or after school job.

Disallow chat rooms / Recognize that chat rooms are the playground of today's sexual predator.

Limit your child's Instant Messaging to a parental approved buddy list. Regularly check your child's buddy list to ensure that it has not been altered.

Place your computer in an area of your home where you can easily supervise your child's Internet activity. If you allow your child to have a webcam, place it in a public area of your house.

Know your kids’ online activities and friends. (Regularly ask your kids about their online friends and activities. Role play with your child various dangerous scenarios that they could encounter online.)

If you allow facebook or myspace, create a facebook account and/or myspace of your own and become your child's friend so monitoring myspace and facebook is easier and an everyday activity for you.

Use parental controls/filtering or monitoring technology which block access to dangerous sites and activities. The following online monitoring utilities and software have been reviewed by our staff and deemed better than average.

• SoftwareTime
• I am Big Brother
• GuardianMonitor
• WebWatcher - Child Monitoring
• PC-Tattletale Parental Control Software
• My Nabyoo - Family Friendly Filter
• iProtectYou
• F-Secure
• Norman Parental Control
• Net Nanny
• Webroot
• MyChild Online Child Protection Software
• Kids Watch Parental Control Software

Establish online rules and an agreement with your child about Internet use at home and outside of the home (i.e., at a friend's house, at school, at the library, etc).

Monitor the amount of time your child spends on the Internet, and at what times of day. Excessive time online, especially at night, may indicate a problem. Remind your child that Internet use is a privilege, not a right.

Instruct your kids never to plan a face-to-face meeting with someone that they have met online.

Report any content or activity that you suspect as illegal or criminal to local law enforcement and to Cybertipline at 1-800-843-5678.

Labels: Child Safety, Computers and Software