Safety Tools For The Internet
Posted in Software on January 2nd, 2012 by Owen Jones – Be the first to commentDo you want to make certain that people, particularly children, in your family are safe whilst they are surfing the Net? If you regard this as one of your responsibilities, then there are a couple of steps that you should think about taking.
The problem for young kids surfing is the danger of meeting, or worse still trusting, a bad person. Insults and email bullying are bad enough, but there is much worse that can take place. Therefore, you ought to educate the children in your care about the dangers of the Internet. It is simple to get these dangers out of proportion. They are very rare occurrences in fact, but they do happen despite all that.
There are precautions that every surfer ought to take, no matter what age the people concerned are. The sickos who prey on users of the Internet are called predators by the majority of 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 should 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 basic degree of service, then enquire of them why they do not or swap your ISP.
You should never see any ads about Viagra, Cialis, penis or breast enlargement unless you type 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 usually 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 purchase 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 deploy 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 become a very effective manner of knowing what your computer is being used for.
However, maybe the safest way of regulating what your kids are using the Net for is to have the computer situated in your living room. You may 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