Keeping your little ones safe online
May 8th, 2008 | Published in Notebook | 6 Comments
My kids have started using the internet a lot more this year, and as a tech savvy mom, I decided to share a few of the tricks we did to keep them safe.. and keep them from seeing things we don’t want them to. If you have any tricks of your own, please do share in the comments for others to use!
Keep the computer in a high traffic area
If your computer is in a spot where you walk past frequently in your home, your kids are less likely to do something they shouldn’t on there. Keep it in the kitchen, or another busy space in your home.. preferably not a room that has a door that closes, and definitely NOT in their bedrooms.
Google
I set up both of my kids with Gmail accounts, via IMAP & a desktop client. Gmail allows you to forward a copy of all incoming messages to another account, so anyone who sends an email to my kids, is sending me one also. If anything fishy comes up.. I will know.. fast. Because I set it up and they access it via a desktop client, the kids don’t actually know their own gmail password, and can’t log into the account and change the settings.
Set Google as their homepage. If your son or daughter is young, use iGoogle to put his or her favorite bookmarks right there on their start page so they can easily click through.
Google Accounts has an option to filter out unsafe content on your account, and you can also check their Google History to see what sites they’ve been going to.
Keep in mind, my kids are young and have just started using the internet… as they get older I’m sure they will be smart enough to get around this stuff.. but for now.. at least I know I’m protecting them when they don’t know enough to protect themselves.
May 8th, 2008at 5:11 pm(#)
Good points. No kids of my own yet, but it’s definitely something to keep in mind. You’re right, eventually they’ll learn ways around your elaborate plan, but you might as well keep it under control while you can. It’s nice that a lot of tools from Google offer such control.
May 9th, 2008at 7:46 am(#)
I think I can use some of these techniques to take care of myself!
May 18th, 2008at 7:35 pm(#)
FoxFilter - good Firefox content filter add-on.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4351
Appreciate your efforts!
May 29th, 2008at 6:03 pm(#)
I use the free services at Open DNS http://opendns.com/ which filters all the DNS requests for me so that any device on the network that gets an IP from my router also uses OpenDNS for lookups. Any of our computers are protected, but so are devices my kids’ friends bring over. Remember, there is a web browser in the Wii!
Best part is that I get a list of blocked requests. No, it isn’t perfect as there are plenty of things that can get through (like images on Flickr & google) but it is just another tool.
June 9th, 2008at 12:28 pm(#)
I heard that Glubble for Firefox is really good for the younger ones but I haven’t really tried it out myself yet as my son is only 4 and hasn’t really used the computer much yet.
However, I do the Gmail forwarding thing as well for my sister-in-law who is 13. She knows I get any of her email, so it’s not like some big secret. She does check it online but at this point I don’t see her turning off forwarding or changing the password. She knows I could just get back in if I wanted to anyway, haha. I also have her other passwords for various things should I need to get in and check on her. She’s not on MySpace but she does have a Facebook and that’s easy enough to monitor, too, any private message she receives in Facebook also gets emailed to here and subsequently to me. I administrate her blog and while she doesn’t post much it all goes through me, I’m not even sure she knows how to moderate comments yet.
There’s also the typical maintenance that includes checking the history, for adware/spyware, etc…
June 9th, 2008at 10:21 pm(#)
Great tips! We just got done redoing our floors, but as soon as I get their computer set up again I’m going to try some of these out.