Child Safe Internet Searching

Web Tools

As mentioned on this and many of our other pages no tool or facilities can replace parental supervision but by using these tools along with facilities offered by your browser and a good Word Selective Search Engine like Yehboo Junior which removes most expletives and nasty word at source, parents, guardians, teachers and educators can drastically reduce the risk of children being exposed to non child friendly websites.

Web tools can be valuable resource and products which monitor your child's activity are invaluable. Available software can monitor everything your child does including emails, chat, instant messaging, music downloads, surfing the web and more... They work by generating a report of your child's activity on a day to day basis.

Other Tools available can work in a different ways by letting you choose what sites are acceptable to you and your child and are allowed to be visited by rating the sites you like. There is usually no type of filtering on this type of tool or any security mechanism to remember. Simple put a bad site is a bad site and a Good site is a good site.

Other software application suites that are easily installed and immediately empower parents and guardians to protect children while on-line and include: child safe Web browsers, "talking" e-mail, "talking" chat, and "talking" instant messaging so you don't have to physically watch your child as long as you are within hearing distance of the computer. The browsers utilize filters to prevent access to adult-oriented websites and further parental controls that allow access to only the best kid-safe Web sites utilizing a continuously upgraded "Include List" that features more than 10,000 Web sites deemed acceptable by the software creators.

Child-Safe Internet Searching: Tools

Kids' search engines
These specialized engines allow your child to search the web without stumbling upon objectionable content. However, these search engines do not restrict your kids from accessing other web sites by typing in the URL (web address) into the address bar. The use of another tool to supplement this one will basically prevent your child from entering any unscrupulous text which could lead to offensive sites.

• Filtering
• Check to see if your ISP allows filtering of Internet activity. Inquire about this option if you have kids that use the web.
  
  

• Filtering software is often installed on your computer to prevent access to certain sites, which are considered to be not for children. 

• Other variations may use keyword and URL analysis to prevent access to questionable material. When choosing a filtering tool, look for one that restricts not only web content, but chat and e-mail. 
  
  
• Monitoring Tools
  Monitor what your kids are doing on the Internet even when your not there. Some allow for a later review of e-mail, chats and sites that your child visited.
  
  These tools work by recording what your child is doing. Some record keystrokes(every time your child presses a button on the keyboard) and mouse clicks, while others take snapshots of the screen and can be viewed later.
  
  
• Time Limiting Tools
  Limit the amount of time that your child spends on the internet. This is a good way to make sure that your child are spending their whole life online. Time limiting tools do not provide filtering features and similar restrictions unless part of another package which provides this.
  
  Multifunctional Products can provide all of the above and coupled with a good restrictive search engine should help alleviate the need of constant over the shoulder watching by parents.