Continuous Internet Monitoring of Kid and Teen
Activities
Exercising Parental Control is not a game - it is every parent's job.
Unless you have some sort of internet monitoring system
installed on your home computer, you cannot tell where your child has gone
online.
Every parent should have some sort of internet safety device
or plan to check on kid and teen online activities for
two main reasons.
-
You need to know if someone else is monitoring your child's
activities online or if someone is watching you, the parent. Even if you have no
reason to suspect that this might be happening, it is a very real and
dangerous
possibility today.
- You also need to know if your child is accessing
inappropriate material online. Just because you have the 'perfect' kid or
teen doesn't
mean that you should relax. This is serious. This is a child's life we're
talking about.
How an internet monitoring program can save kid and teen lives
You've heard about spam. Now, let's say your child has an
email address. It may be a secure email through yahoo or some other
provider. Suppose that he gets emails only from good friends and classmates.
If a trusted classmate forwards a nice inspirational or
motivational quote to your teenager, who then passes it on to some other
friend, and so onwards, there is a big danger right here! How?
Well, you might have noticed that each time a message
gets forwarded it carries the information from the previous recipients.
Actually, some email address reapers use this same tactic to collect email
addresses.
Now stay with me here...
If your child's email address, along with those of the
other recipients, gets around
to the wrong person, he will be getting unsolicited email messages (or spam)
very soon.
Spammers will send messages the these addresses OR use
them to send their mailings to others. They even have tricks to mask the
source of their spam.
Spam Email Can Carry Inappropriate Material
A spammer can send a text message with an inappropriate
link to your child. In innocence, your young child or teen could click on this link and
lands up on a pornographic website!
He never intended to do that, he was just trapped. Now
what does he do? He may giggle at the inappropriate material that may
have tracked him down and finally found him. Naturally, he may not want to
tell you about this - especially if he can't explain how and why he was sent
this material.
What's more, he may be afraid that you will prevent him
from using the computer in the future, and he does not want you to crash his
computer gaming and surfing career.
Even if a kid or a teen should dismiss this first
instance, the spammer will not. He knows how advertising works. He will be
sending more and more material to your kids email address again and again.
So what should you [responsible parent] do?
Install Internet Monitoring Software
If you had installed internet monitoring software on that
computer, you would be able so tell how spamming and the viewing of
inappropriate material all started.
Actually, no. A good monitoring program not only tracks
things coming into you computer, it can prevent it. Your child would not be
'between a rock and a hard place' trying to come up with a credible
explanation in order to preserve his access to the computer.
Some computer professionals can do internet monitoring by
themselves without using software. The great majority of us just cannot do
it. But we should not sit and feel helpless. Neither should we pretend that
our families are far removed from the problem.
If you know how to access or monitor your kid's online
activities manually, you know it is a big job in itself. Every hour spent on the
computer may require another hour to sift through cached data searching for dangerous
materials. Who has that amount of time?
Plus you could be wasting time if the files are deleted
before you get time to look.
You can use software that only you (the installer) will know is there.
And only you will be able to control it's operation, but everyone can be
safe online.
What do I recommend? The
Internet monitoring
program called PC Tattletale is a well-known parental control
instrument, and it provides the security against all the issues we raised in
this article. Follow the link for more information - both audio and text -
now. Keep your kid and teen safe online.
Further Reading
Read more information on how to
stay safe online
in materials provided by the National Cyber Security Alliance
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