Why Parental Control Software?

Why Parental Control Software? Parental control software is known by many names including parental software, internet safety software, cyber safety software, monitoring software and so on. Ultimately, its purpose is to monitor and filter internet traffic.

Let’s examine why parents may wish to install it and some of the key features and use.

Children are using the internet at a younger age than ever before. One of the reasons for this is that technology has improved considerably from the old ‘dial up’ days, when children got bored waiting for a page to open! Not the case anymore with much faster broadband speeds.

Children are now ‘cutting their teeth’ on the internet at aged 4 or 5 years of age. Remember when we started school many years back? Our parents would first walk us to school, help us cross the road and walk us to the gate, to make sure we got their safely. They would slowly pull back the restrictions by walking us to the crossing and letting us cross by ourselves, till eventually letting us walk the whole way on our own. It should be the same when our children use the internet.

So, why do so many parents believe protecting their children on the internet starts at age 11 or 12? No parents ever kissed their 5 year old child goodbye at the door and expect their child to find their own way to school. It’s just not safe.

Why do parents let their child play in an open environment that has many lures out there to potentially get them into difficulty? It is no different to sending a child onto a highway blindfolded, and asking them to walk across.

If you type in a misspelt word in a search engine and you may stumble across pornographic material. Type in any girl’s name, and if your search engine is not restricted, you’re likely to land on pornography. The same can be said for cartoon characters and the list goes on.

A search engine is the window to the internet. Parents should at least know what their kids are typing in!

As parents we need to guide our children and teach them positive aspects of the internet. At the same time explain the dangers and what they should be aware of. Yes, now that the computer is out of the bedroom that’s great! But you can never be over their shoulder every time they are using the internet.

Many young children are using social networks without their parent’s knowledge. Unless the site is a recommended safe site, there is potential for grooming, bullying or the child handing over of personal and identifiable information.

We recommend parental control software be installed on any computer as SOON as a child starts using the internet. There are many products on the market, some cost money and others are for free.

When you decide which one, choose one that has a good choice of internet categories to block. All of the products record ALL internet activity as the basic function. Other options to look out for that you want are:

Reporting, either via email or through a website
Ability to prevent personal information like phone numbers and addresses from being sent
Being able to record internet searches
Record and block chat, as well as identify who is chatting
Take screenshots of activity
Take webcam screenshots of activity
Record keystrokes being typed
Specifying specific sites to block and not block
Specify time use options (great for homework time)
Record and block certain programs from being used
As a minimum, parents want to install software that records website activity, search terms used and be able to block certain categories of sites being able to be accessed.

Protecting our children on the internet using software is simple and gives us parents more time for ourselves. We all deserve it!