Many children know more about the Internet than their parents do. They are easily able to navigate their way online and this can open up a whole new world for them. Children can make new friends, communicate with current friends, and play games. While this can be a great opportunity, the Internet can also be a very dangerous place for kids.
Parents want to keep their kids safe, but they may feel helpless when it comes to protecting their children when they are online. One way that parents can keep their children safe is by spying on their children’s online activity. There are several ways a parent can do this, and this article discusses them.
How to Spy
There are several ways that a parent can spy on their children online to help keep them safe. One way to do it is by using the parental control settings that a computer has. The newer the program, the better the parental control settings will be. So if a parent has Mac OS X Leopard or Windows Vista, they will have even better parental control settings than an older system.
Parental controls and Windows
To set up the parental controls on Windows, a parent will go through the Control Panels to the Family Safety Control Panel. It is here that they will be able to choose what restrictions they would like to put on the online usage and they can even block certain programs and games.
Parental controls and a Mac
If they have a Mac, the parent will need to go through the System Preferences on the menu and then they will be able to set the Parental Controls for each user account on the computer. This will allow them to monitor and restrict the things they feel they need to.
Software
A parent can also purchase and use software to spy on their children online. There are two main types of software available to parents to help them keep their children safe online. One type is blocking software. This type of software allows parents to blocker certain websites that they do not want their children viewing.
Some of the more in depth filtering software also allows parents to block instant messaging, chats, and emails. If a parent does not want to block these things completely, many filtering software programs allow them to filter and monitor chats, as well as monitor and filter emails.
The other main type of spying software that a parent can use to keep their children safe online is recording software. Recording or monitoring software will record information that is downloaded, sent, received, or viewed while a child is online. Parents can even flag certain words and they will receive an alert if these words are used when the child is online.
Monitoring software can record keystrokes, chats, instant messaging, web surfing, and any files that are transferred. It can log emails and some can even log email attachments and passwords.
When parents decide to use the built-in parental controls on their computer or to purchase blocking, filtering, or monitoring software they should not feel guilty about spying on their children online. These tools have been developed to help parents keep their children safe online. And by using them, parents should know that they are doing what is best for their children since they are trying to protect them.
great! just what i needed!