Online Child Safety - Ways to protect your children on the Internet

Keep your childs Online Internet experience safe. Protect your child from adult sites and more.

Just imagine waking up some day, flicking on the TV in order to watch the morning news, and all you could find was either sexual or violent adult rated content. Then before you can even overcome the shock of this experience you realize that your child has already been awake for several hours watching TV!

You may ask where we come up with such a sick and twisted scenario but the sad truth is that world already exists. And more likely than not you have already given your child access to that world without even realizing the gravity of what you have done.

Conservative estimates show that there are well over 200 million adult rated (pornographic and otherwise offensive) web sites on the internet today. Most of these have some sort of trailer or teaser system to lure new customers to pay for their services. Unfortunately, this also means that if all these (free) trailers and teasers were to be lined up they would result in a single movie that would take approximately 6200 years to play from beginning to end!

If you are suddenly overcome by a feeling of dread and the terrifying notion that you just gave Pandora's Box to your child to play with we can hardly blame you.

But ripping the cord out of the wall and keeping your child from using the Internet till he/she is good and ready to face this world of potential horrors isn't the answer.

Whether we like it or not the Internet has become a very critical component in your child's education. Not only does it teach basic computer usage (which is indispensable in today's computerized world) but it also contains more knowledge than you can find in most of the world's libraries combined.

With modern technologies often not even finding their way into book-form the Internet quickly is developing into the world's only up-to-date library. Anything from growing potatoes, pet care and climate to economy, finance, math, language and anything else you could possibly imagine can be found on the Internet.

From the perfect aid for homework assignments to a pleasant environment to relax in the Internet can add immensely to the development of your child's mind.

Simply cutting off this source would be a large mistake, but how else are we going to control our child's internet habits without having to continually be watching?

Thankfully the problems of the Internet have been known for a long time and entire companies have devoted their time and efforts into protecting our children from questionable content.

These independent programs are generally known as 'web sitters', are generally freely downloadable and provide an immense amount of protection from unwanted adult content.

A simple search on child safety on the internet will allow you to pick from a multitude of different programs designed solely to protect our children from exposure to what we will lovingly label: internet garbage.

The choice of the appropriate web sitter is up to the individual parents simply because many of the programs that protect our children offer extensive and variable amounts of additional features. This can range from customizable blocklists that allow us to block specific web sites according to our choosing, restrict internet chat programs (farewell hours of internet chatting) and even restrict the time our child is allowed to be online.

Nonetheless it is important to note that no matter the tool you choose it is wise to pick a free one first, this will allow you to experience this type of program's capabilities. Additionally the basic blocking capabilities provided by free 'web sitters' are often more than enough security for the majority of us.

With the choice of an appropriate web sitter left in your capable hands we move on to a short explanation of how web sitters work and one of their most obvious drawbacks.

The typical web sitter is equipped with a large database of websites that are considered 'adult content' or have otherwise been deemed unsuitable for children. Whenever a child attempts to access any of these sites they will simply not be displayed and are generally replaced by the web sitter's own screen saying that the web site has been blocked due to offensive content.

The list of web sites is compiled by the companies that made the program and is continually updated. To update these lists the companies make use of little programs called 'spiders' that crawl through the web looking for any sign of 'Internet garbage'.

For example a spider can be told to look for any and all sites with the word 'porn' (Excuse the language) in it or can even be told just to look for 'xxx'. All the sites the spider finds that contain the search term are then added to the list and as a result made unavailable to your children.

Unfortunately these 'spiders' are very simple creatures and cannot discern between www.XXXLClothing.com and an actual adult rated site. This causes sites that do not have offensive content to be added to the blocklist inadvertently. Not a good thing for the owner of an internet based business, but the owner can contact the blocking company and request to be deleted from the database.

Finally it's good to know that a high-quality web sitter will block 95% of all offensive content from your child. However having a watchful eye out for any potential problems is advised (after all, a good parent will now and then check on their child no matter what he/she is doing).