Implementing Safety Tools For Surfers
Posted by Owen Jones | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 03-01-2012-05-2008
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Do you want to make sure that people, especially children, in your family are protected whilst they are surfing the Net? If you regard this as one of your responsibilities, then there are a couple of steps that you ought to think about taking.
The difficulty for young kids surfing is the risk of meeting, or worse still trusting, a bad person. Insults and email bullying are bad enough, but there is much worse that can happen. Therefore, you should educate the children in your care regarding the dangers of the Net. It is easy to get these dangers out of proportion. They are very rare occurrences in fact, but they do take place despite all that.
There are precautions that every surfer should take, no matter what age the folks concerned are. The sickos who prey on users of the Net are called predators by most surfers.
Besides common sense, there are also Net safety tools that you can make use of to keep your friends and family safe. These tools can be nebulous, as in software, or material, as in hardware.
The first line of defence ought to be provided before the signal gets into your house. In other words, your Internet Service Provider ought to be jamming known junk and problem emails from arriving at your inbox. If they are not providing this very fundamental degree of service, then ask them why they do not or swap your ISP.
You should never see any ads concerning Viagra, Cialis, penis or breast enlargement unless you enter the query into a search engine. Those days have gone and good riddance.
The next degree of security ought to be your firewall. If you are using a router, then there will normally be a firewall built into it. If there is not, do not purchase it. However, there should be a firewall built into your browser. MS Windows XP and Windows 7 have effective firewalls, but you can also buy one.
The third degree is that of parental control switches. However, children learn how to turn these off. Windows has such controls or you can buy even more powerful controls. If you remain with Windows, check your kids’ computer settings at least each and every week while they are at school.
Next, you can block web sites and email addresses one by one. This is done by ‘black listing’ web sites. This is also to be seen in the communication software like Outlook, Outlook Express and Explorer, but do not get complacent, kids know how to reverse these blocks as well.
You can also install a ‘Keyword Tracker’. this piece of software will tell you, upon request, which are the foremost keywords used on that computer. This can be a real eye-opener and can be a very effective manner of knowing what your computer is being used for.
However, perhaps the safest method of controlling what your kids are using the Internet for is to have the computer situated in your living room. You might think that it is a shame that it has to come to that, but, hey!, better safe than sorry, or not?
Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with the network antivirus software. If you have an interest in such software, please go over to our website now at Computer Antivirus Software
