AntiSpam Guide
Protecting your children from online predators
from: Jacob A. Erdei
This tutorial will help to educate you on ways to protect your child online. The reason it is so important is simple. Law enforcement officials estimate that there are around 50,000 predators online at any given time. This does not mean you need to keep your child off the internet. These easy to follow steps along with some of the software shown on this website and careful vigilance can help you keep your child safe online.
First step: Tighten up your settings. A very popular teen site for girls is gurl.com however if they mistype and put in girl.com then they will be directed to a pornographic site. There are many similar addresses as well like whitehouse.com, no that's not the white house your kid wanted whitehouse.gov ooopps!
If you have windows XP and most do the best place to start is creating the child's own log in account. To do this you go to START (the lower left hand corner) Select the control panel, open up the user accounts by double clicking, then select add a new account. Follow the simple steps to create a new account. While you are in there you might want to put a password on yours so your child will not have access to it. It is also a good idea to only grant them limited access. This will ensure they can not change their setting or install any programs. That way you KNOW exactly what is installed on the computer.
Next we will take a look at browsers. The most popular one out there is Internet explorer. You know the one that looks like an E and is blue. You can set the setting to block out language, sex, nudity and violence. To do this open up the browser and go to tools > internet options > Content and in the content box select enable. You will see a screen pop up and in that you will see the 4 titles I previously mentioned. Slide the bar at the bottom all the way over to the left so the level is 0. Click the apply button and you are set. You can also set a password under the general tab so no one but you can change the settings. The unfortunate down side to this is it will also block some sites your child may need for homework like Google and others. A good way around this is to install a completely separate browser if you are unsatisfied with Internet Explorer. A few that work very well and that are free are
www.crayoncrawler.com
www.kidrocket.org
Even with all those precautions pornography may still find its way through. The only thing to stop this from happening for sure is to purchase software to protect your child. you can view a list of software products we recomend at www.brainboxcopmuters.com
So you did all that now is my family safe you ask? Well you're off to a great start and if you made it this far in the tutorial I know you are a Great parent and want to do everything in your power to make your kids safe. The following may be the most important information in this tutorial. MONITORING IM (instant messages) If there is one thing kids love it's IM clients like yahoo, AOL, ICQ, MSN and the like. Start by telling your kids not to give out any personal information even when they are in a chat room with friends. It's a good idea to review your kid's profile. Look for words that would attract an on-line predator like CUTE or YOUNG. Make sure their profile is vague. Never have them list their age or gender. All Instant Messengers let you block messages from unknown users. Make sure to set this up.
For MSN messenger got to tools > Options > Privacy and enable "Only people on my Allow list can se my status and send me messages
For AOL Messenger hit F7, click Privacy and then select "Allow only users on my buddy list"
For ICQ click Main > Security & Privacy Permisions > Spam Control and then enable "Accept messages only from users on my Contact list"
For Yahoo click Messenger > Preferences > Ignore list and then enable "Ignore anyone who is not on my messenger list"
Now onto emails. This one can be very hard to resolve and even then I can not guarantee your child will not get exposed. If your child uses Outlook or Outlook Express then Click Here Content watch is a good program to use. Most likely your child uses a free web based e-mail service like hotmail, yahoo, AOL, Gmail, myspace. If that is the case then the only thing you can really do is set the spam filter to the highest protection. Education is key. Letting your teenage girl know that the mail she just got in her junk mail box may say it's from Brittany Spears but it is really not and not to click on any e-mail attachments unless they know exactly who they came from in which case they should be in the regular e-mail box folder and not junk mail folder. If you're teen does use Outlook consider switching them to Mozilla's free e-mail service. It is similar in appearance and use to outlook but has a built in filter. www.mozilla.org. I would still get the Content Watch software. It's good stuff!
Something I do with my 4 year old(He may not be able to type yet but he sure knows his way around a computer) which works out great is bookmark approved websites for them. This way you give them somewhere to go and they won't be wondering the web aimlessly. Some good sites are www.kidgrid.com and www.kaboose.com. There are many others so look around and decide what is best for your child.
Education is really the key. You may be able to protect them when they are at your house but what about their friend's house. The best way is to communicate with other parents and inform them. Give them our web address! Let your child/teen know what concerns you have and some of the tips you learned here. If they are not aware of sexual predators then they may walk into a bad situation.
For more information or to view a list of computer repair tips visit www.brainboxcopmuters.com
About the author:
Jacob Erdei is the owner of Brain Box Computers located in Fort Collins CO. Brain Box Computer services all of northern Colorado for computer repair and provides valuable information on computer repair on it's website at www.brainboxcopmuters.com
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