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Internet Safety 4 Adults

Safe Surfing Info for Adults

The internet is a collection of material from all over the world, which can be published by anyone in the world. Internet Service Providers enable you to access the internet but obviously can't control the content you find. It's up to you to choose which websites you, and more importantly your children, view.

Because of the vast amount of information and entertainment available on the internet, its use is a definite advantage for children. There is limitless information on just about every subject imaginable and the internet is used more and more as a research tool for school and home projects. However, there are a number of risks children face while surfing online. Supervising and giving your child advice are the best things you can do to reduce the risks your child faces.

Online risks children face include:

  • Child predators trying to persuade children to meet them in person by communicating through email or a chat program.
  • Access to websites that are inappropriate for children. This includes adult oriented sites, sites that advocate illegal activities, and sites that risk their privacy. Besides pornography, your children can also be exposed to alcohol & tobacco advertisements, gore, hate literature, drug promotion, and instructions to build bombs and weapons.

The best way to for your child to learn the importance of being protected while online is to have a talk with them about the dangers and set some rules and guidelines. Below we have a list of steps adults should take to help protect their children. Combining clear rules and guidelines with frequent parental supervision is a great way to protect your child.

We've broken this page down into a few sections:

6 Steps to Safe Surfing

  1. Set up reasonable rules and guidelines for your children, discuss them, and keep a checklist handy for them to review. Monitor your children's compliance with the rules.
  2. Set up the computer in a location that is easy to see and check on.
  3. Spend time surfing the internet with your children. Learn the websites they use or have them teach you.
  4. Do not allow your child to give out personal information or send out photographs of themselves while online.
  5. Learn who your children's online friends are and remind them not to talk to strangers. Do not let them meet in person with someone they have met online unless you accompany them.
  6. Do not overreact if your children tell you about a problem they are having on the computer. Work together to find a solution. View more information on reporting offensive or illegal internet content here.

Using Search Engines

Using a 'Kid Safe' search engine as opposed to a regular search engine (ie. Yahooligans.com; askforkids.com...etc) will make it a lot less likely that children will accidentally come across inappropriate material.

Most popular search engines do have a filter that will remove the mature content from the search results, however you will have to click a link for more options which will likely be labeled something like preferences, more options, or advanced search to turn the filters on.

Read more about Google's SafeSearch filtering and Yahoo's Search Preferences, as well as their featured articles for parents.

Using E-mail

Your child will most likely want to have their own e-mail address so that they can keep in touch with their friends or family or easily contact teachers or classmates for homework help. Allowing your child to have their own e-mail account gives them some independence and the ability to develop their writing skills. A good idea is to register an email account with your younger children so that you can monitor their incoming mail to watch out for messages from strangers or unwanted spam (junk e-mail). It's important to encourage your children to be responsible with their e-mail use and to talk to you if they encounter any inappropriate behaviour from strangers. View more information on reporting any inappropriate behaviour from strangers such as luring or internet content that is illegal here.

The most popular websites that offer free webmail e-mail addresses are Hotmail and Yahoo!. These services give you the option of implementing a spam filter, however they are not able to filter all of the junk mail and sometimes they will even filter wanted e-mail. Net Idea offers multiple e-mail addresses on all of our internet access plans, which include spam filtering and webmail access.

* 70% of Canadian kids between 9 and 17 have e-mail accounts. Of these, 81% have a free e-mail account such as Hotmail or Yahoo! and 44% say their parents don't know about their e-mail accounts.

Chat Software

One of the main purposes children use the internet for is chatting. Furthermore, instant messaging software or instant messengers (IM) have become the most popular method to do so. In fact, 56% of Canadian Youth (aged 9-17) use the internet for instant messaging and only 28% of parents are aware that their kids use IM *. Instant messaging software allows users to exchange real time personal messages with each other, as well as send files to each other. To sign up for this free membership, a user must download a file that installs the small program, choose their username and password, and fill out a form of personal details. Once you have the instant messenger running, you can add people to your 'Buddy List' by their email address. Your Buddy List is a list of your friends that you can message and who can message you.

The most widely used instant messengers include MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, and Skype. Help your child set-up their IM by ensuring their
personal information is left blank and all security features are on.

Parental Control Software

Another method to protect your child while online, is through the use of 'Parental Control' software. There are a number of programs available to monitor and block your child's activity online, including web surfing, chatting, email, and newsgroups. These programs are very customizable as to what you want your child to be able to view, and some even have timers so that you can set limits of how long you want your child online. The average cost for these Parental Control programs is $40 USD, however almost all of them allow you to try the program free for 15 days. These programs are not a complete alternative to the effectiveness of real parental supervision, but will do a very good job of limiting what your child can view online. Check out the links below for more information on some of the highest rated Parental Control software:

Spam Filtering Software

One way people are often exposed to pornographic material is through spam, or unwanted email. If you don't run Parental Control software, another way to block spam is with spam filtering software. There is an abundance of companies manufacturing spam filtering software, therefore it's important to find one that has the features you want, and will run with the software you already own. The obvious advantage of this software is to block most unwelcome email from entering your email software's inbox. Some of the disadvantages include not usually being able to block 100% of all spam, periodically filtering out wanted email by accident, and some of the software is difficult to setup and run efficiently. These programs range in cost from an annual membership of $9.95 USD to a one-time purchase price of about $40 USD, but if you want to test them first most have a trial period. If you are interested, take the time to learn more about some of the higher rated spam filtering programs by following the links below:

Note: Often unwanted email messages give you the option of 'unsubscribing' from their mailing list however, this is usually a bad idea. By responding to their email, it will confirm that your email account is active and you may see an increase in the spam you receive.

Learn Where Your Kids are Going

Web browsers have a built-in feature known as the History. The History keeps track of all the sites you have visited and when you have visited them within a defined length of time. In Internet Explorer the default length of time pages are kept in the History is 20 days whereas the Mozilla Firefox default is days. You can easily change this duration by going to Tools > Internet Options in Internet Explorer or Tools > Options > Privacy > History in Firefox. This is not always a reliable way to track your child's footsteps, because many people know that the History can be cleared with a click of a button.

* 54% of Canadian kids say their parents never check to see what websites they've visited.

To Access the History in Internet Explorer

Once your Internet Explorer browser has loaded, you can either press Ctrl-H or click View > Explorer Bar > History to open the History window. In the History window, you will see the days of the current week and possibly previous weeks listed, depending on your History duration settings. When you click on one of the days, all the websites you have visited on that day we be listed underneath.

IE History

To Access the History in Mozilla Firefox

Once Firefox is loaded, you can either press Ctrl-H or click Go > History. Once the History window is open, you will see the different folders of web addresses categorized by the day they were accessed.

Firefox History


* Source: Young Canadians in a Wired World: The Students' View 2001 is a nationwide investigation of internet use among Canadian youth that explores what kids do online, how they perceive the internet, and what they know about it. Click for more information and statistics