How to monitor your kids activity on the Internet
What your kids do on the Internet should be of concern to every parent that is trying to guide their children to a good moral upbringing. Even though I am not from India, I know that this is a major factor in the Indian society and worries a lot of parents out their. Below is a guide to some steps you can take to know what your child is doing during his/her time online.
Things You'll Need
- A good web content filtering software
- A strong password
- Some smart acting. (It is no secret that some of our kids are smarter than us when it comes to the PC)
Steps
Most Operating Systems esp. Windows (2000/XP/Vista/7) allows User to create separate user accounts that have different privileges. The first step towards acting smart is to create an account that has limited/restricted access to the computer for your kid. Viewing all types of content online can lead to the invasion of hackers, spyware, viruses, trojans etc.
Set and View your browsers history. This is simple and very common method of viewing your child activity. Most Browser has a feature to view every page and site that you have visited for some amount of time. This time limit is often set in Tools>Options and check for "History" Settings.
Get a good Web filtering software. This allows you to manage the sites that you allow access to and which you want to block. Even you can find and purchase some very nice ones, I would recommend DansGaurdian (http://www.dansguardian.org/), this is free and can be easily downloaded and installed if you are using Linux OS. If you use Windows you can use cyberPatrol (http://www.cyberpatrol.com). You can set your own passwords and then set the sites you want to block. It also has a smart way to analyze sites and add them to the blocked list..
Tips
- Whenever creating your own passwords to access your computer or any software ensure you create a strong password.
- Strong password consist of characters (UPPER and lower) case, numbers and special characters. e.g 1oV3Bea$t .
- Weak passwords are those that is very closely related to you and normally simple to figure out e.g 6339915 (your phone number).
Caution
- Blocking content from your children often leads to a feeling of distrust from your child. You should be very careful how you deploy such a solution. Normally I would advise to talk to your kids about their time spent online before taking any action.
- Be also careful how you add site to you web filter. It is a known fact that people often lock their self out of sites that they may want to visit during their time spent online.
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