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Keep your kids safe on the internet!!
15 Quick Tips For Online Safety
- Personal information stays personal. Teach kids not to share passwords or give up information.
- Make sure your child doesn't spend all of his or her time on the computer.
- For younger kids (pre 7th grade) try to keep the computer in a shared family space. For older kids who need to work in their own space make sure you pop your head in often and see what they're up to.
- Learn about computer so you can enjoy them together with your kids.
- Talk to your kids about where they go on line and ask then to show you things.
- Make sure that your children feel comfortable coming to you in the event that there's an online problem. If they worry that you'll take away their computers or blame them for causing trouble they won't come to you until it's too late.
- Keep kids out of chat rooms or IRC's unless they are monitored.
- Have them sign an acceptable use policy and let them know they'll lose computer privileges if they abuse rules.
- Help them find a balance between computing and other activities
- Know their online friends, buddies and who they email. Know the sites they frequent.
- Warn then that things said on the internet take on a life of their won and travel very quickly.
- Warn them not to take on roles and personae like “I'm a 12 year old boy named Billy” when they're not.
- Warn them to be suspicious of people they don't know who lure them into a conversation and ask too many details.
- Own the master account with your online service. As the master account holder you can use the parental control tools that are part of the most services.
- Know what they do at their friend's houses, especially on the internet.
7 Safe Blogging Tips
- Avoid postings that could enable a stranger to locate you. That includes you lastname, the name of your school or supports teams, the town you live in and where you hang out.
- Check to see if your blogging service has a “friends” list that allows you to control who can visit your blog. If so, be sure to allow only people you know and trust. Be very careful before adding strangers to your list and he extremely careful about the information you post that can be assessed by people outside your friends list.
- Avoid getting together with someone you “meet” through blog unless you are certain of their actual identity. If you do meet them, arrange the meeting in a public place and bring some friends along.
- Be very careful about photographs you put on your blog. It's best to avoid photos that can make it easy for people to recognize you. It's a very bad idea to post photos that are suggestive or sexual in nature. Before uploading a photo, ask how you would feel if that picture were seen by your parents, a college admissions counselor, a potential employer, a future boyfriend/girlfriend or spouse or, perhaps your grandparents. What if you were to run for office someday? What you post on the internet can be downloaded by others and can hang around forever.
- Avoid postings that could embarrass you, your friends or family members now or later, Remember, what you post on your blog can be copied and stored and could come back to haunt you years later.
- If you allow non-friends or strangers to post comments to your blog, check the comments regularly to make sure they're appropriate and, if not, remove them. Never allow messages that are mean, threatening, or embarrassing to you or others. Never respond to such messages either. Just delete them and, if possible block that person from visiting your blog.
- Do not lie about your age when you sign up for a blog. Age limitations are there for a good reason. Claiming that
you are older than you are could get you into trouble and put you at risk.
For more on blog safety, visit BlogSafety.com Other resources include Safekids.com and Safeteens.com
Parents: Useful Links for Parental Control Internet Sites
ww.netsmartz.org
www.isafe.org
www.cybertipline.com
www.familywatchdog.us
www.state.mi.us/mdoc/asp/otis2.html
www.mipsor.state.mi.us/
www.blogsafety.com
www.netnanny.com
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