Parental Control for PC: Internet Safety For Children

Web Safety for Children and Teens

• On this page:
• Information and resources about keeping children safe on the web (just below).
• Web site blocking and monitoring options.
• Parental control software –

– including NetIntelligence Parental Control, which you can download and install on three computers.

• Young children with free, unfiltered internet access are exposed to violent and pornographic websites and images.
• Children using chat rooms often supply their home address and phone numbers to strangers.
• Young children post their personal details and photographs on social websites like Myspace and Facebook. It is well known that sexual predators love to lurk on social sites like these.
• Children may not have the judgment to protect themselves from phishing and scams. (Even adults are fooled by these.)
• Children may encounter online stalkers and online bullies on social websites.

(If you have trouble of that sort – i.e. stalkers or online bullies – advice and information can be found here, bullyonline.org.)

What is the 'social web'?

You might be a parent of children who use the web, and perhaps you don't really understand what goes on at some of the social web sites.

The kind of web activities children participate in ̵l; e.g. Instant Messaging, Chat Rooms, MySpace, Xanga, Facebook, YouTube – might not be clear to you.

If this is the case, you can check the Internet Safety Guide at CommonSense.com. They explain for parents – quickly and simply – all the essentials.

Another helpful site, with advice about internet safety for parents and children, is the UK based Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre

How to protect children on the web.

Obviously you can keep children safe if you can personally supervise them for the entire time that are using any computer.

For most parents this is not going to work.

Fortunately, we can also apply safety measures to protect children from internet 'bad neighbourhoods'.

When children are on the web we want to give them the same protection we give them in the real world. I.e. we want to know:

• Where they are going
• When they are going there
• What they are doing there

You can achieve this by using parental control software or online safety measures to:

• Block and filter the web keeping objectionable websites away from children
• Monitor, control and record what children are doing on the computer

1: Block Objectionable Websites

There are internet filters available, including some free ones, that can block bad web neighbourhoods from your PC.

Here are two free services for this.

k9 Web Protection
Naomi

Microsoft are also developing a family safety function.

If you use Vista you might have seen some sign of it already. It looks like Microsoft's plan is to (eventually) give all Windows users the functions of the (currently independently made) parental control software.
At the time of writing, what I can find at Microsoft is still in development. But you can test drive it already, i.e. you can try the beta version. Here is a link: Microsoft's Family Safety Tool.

2: Monitor computer use

Here we are talking about software that allows a parent to monitor the internet activities, web surfing and software use of children (or other adults) on connected computers.

Software that can do this has features like the following:

3: Block and restrict computer and internet access

• You can filter and block objectionable websites (as described above)
• You can allow or restrict access to software on a computer
• You can allow or restrict access to the computer at specified times, e.g. no computer use at homework time

4: Monitor and get reports

The child protection or parental control software we describe below has options like these:

• You can get a report showing what websites children have been visiting
• You can see a report about what software children have been using
• You can see a record of everything that children read and write in internet messaging or chat sessions
• You can read all the emails that children send
• You can get all the passwords that children use (!)

As you can see, there is a spectrum and escalation here – starting with 'I should be concerned about my children' and heading towards 'my children should have no privacy whatever'.

Protection vs. Privacy

The use of monitoring tools with these capabilities has always been controversial.

People worry about censorship and about how much privacy people (including children) should have.

In our discussion we are concentrating on the issue of supervising and protecting children.

But, instead of 'children' we could also say 'spouse' or 'employee'.

Obviously these same tools can be used to monitor your husband or wife, rather than your child.

They can be used to supervise your employees.

Should your employer be able to read all your emails? Should your spouse know all your passwords?

Just thought I would mention it. We all have to make our own judgements about this.

Parental Control Software

Some of the better known names in this kind of software are Cyber Patrol, SafeEyes and CYBERsitter.

Choosing monitoring software

A main quality issue with tools or services to block or filter websites is that they either block too many websites or let some bad ones into your browsers.

You have to decide for yourself which is worse:

• It can be annoying to find that you can't get to a perfectly acceptable site that you need to visit.
• On the other hand it can also be alarming to find that something offensive sneaked past your child-safety filter.

Another quality issue: is the parental control software itself well hidden or able to defend itself. Computer-savvy children can work out how to disable or 'sneak past' parental control programs that are not very secure.

My research suggests that:

• These filters, whether free or commercial, are much better than they used to be at 'getting it right'.
• Since new websites are being made every minute these filters will never be perfect.

With most internet filters you can allow or ban websites on a one-by-one basis. So, if your main concern is to protect children from objectionable sites, you can start with aggressive blocking, then make allowances for any sites that get unnecessarily blocked.

Apart from that, it's just a question of whether a monitoring tool has the features you want. For example, you can consider:

• How many computers or users do you want to monitor?
• How much control and access do you want. E.g. do you actually want to be able to read all your child's email?

Here are some parental control programs.

NetIntelligence Parental Control

Netintelligence is more than just filtering and blocking software. It also provides features to control and get reports about computer activity, e.g. what software was running and when, what web pages were visited.

Main Features:

• You can deploy it on three computers, control it from one
• It is web-based and easy to use
• It is relatively polite – it aims at protection, rather than total invasion of privacy (and password collecting)

Easy to install and use

I can vouch that NetIntelligence is easy to install and set up. I wanted to check this because it's very important. This sort of thing is only useful if it's easy for parents to deploy.

Also it seems to me that, once installed, NetIntelligence is well concealed – so children will not be able to disable it.

Click on any of the NetIntelligence links to download.

Or read more about the features on our parental control software page.

CyberPatrol

CyberPatrol lets you monitor and control your child's online activities and protects them from harmful content, including spyware and phishing sites. It lets you block or filter chat and instant messaging programs as well as safeguard against abusive language in chat sessions.

CyberPatrol installs on only one computer so it does not have the remote monitoring function of NetIntelligence. However it does give parents a lot of control over any PC with CyberPatrol installed.

You can monitor and control your child's online activities and protect them from harmful content, including spyware and phishing sites. You can block or filter chat and instant messaging programs as well as safeguard against abusive language in chat sessions.

You can choose to manage the time they spend online and help prevent them from divulging their personal information.
CyberPatrol lets you choose where, when, and how your child surfs online - even when you can't be there.

Click to buy and download CyberPatrol or visit the Cyber Patrol web site.

Or read about the features in detail on our parental control software page.

Webroot Parental Controls

Webroot specialises in security software. They are particularly famous for their anti-spyware software.
In 2007 they upgraded and re-named their 'Child Safe' software for keeping children safe on the web.

Main Features

Visit Webroot...
Save $10 on Webroot® Parental Controls. Click here.

(At present these links to Webroot take you to the Webroot main site: click on the 'Home & Home Office' tab or the 'All Products' link to find Webroot Parental Controls.)

...or read about more features on our parental controls software page.

BitDefender Internet Security

If you don't already have anti-virus and firewall software installed, and you do want parental control software, check out BitDefender Internet Security. (Link goes to our BitDefender page with a full description of all the features.)

BitDefender's Internet Security suite puts a big emphasis on the parental controls/child safety aspect of online safety.

You can download a free trial of BitDefender Internet Security from the links on our BitDefender page.

The BitDefender parental control module can:

• Block access to web sites and e-mails you deem inappropriate.
• Block access to the Internet entirely, (e.g. for certain periods of time, such as when it’s “homework time”).
• Prevent children from running games, chat, file-sharing programs or other programs, according to your settings.

With BitDefender Internet Security you are also getting top quality anti-virus and firewall tools of the kind we recommend on this site.

NOTE:
The best internet security suites usually develop from a quality anti-virus tool, (perhaps with a firewall added). Then the vendor adds extra features like email monitoring, protection from identity theft, anti-spyware tools, and so on.

You can see elsewhere on this site that BitDefender is one of the brands you can trust for your anti-virus and firewall needs. What I am saying here is that, among the security suites available from security specialists, BitDefender is the brand that has put the most features into a parental control and child web safety module.

You will see on our BitDefender page that, by using an internet security suite from a good provider, you can deal with a whole lot of security issues at once for low price.

Don't forget, you can get a free trial of BitDefender software from the links on our BitDefender page.