Last night I attended a meeting that our local Sheriff’s office presented on Internet Security and how it relates to families. With 2 boys getting increasingly interested in the world out on the internet (and being a geek dad), I was hoping for some stuff that I could use.
For the most part, I was disappointed though it did re-inforce the information that I already knew. Kathy and I have already done all of the things that the detective had recommended which to us was very common sense stuff.
- Computers should be in public areas and not in the kids bedrooms. In our house, we have put the kids computer very close to where Kathy’s and mine are. This way when they are on the computer, they have us close to them for help and monitoring.
- Parents should consider monitoring and restricting software (i.e. NetNanny). Kathy and I are doing this. It can be a pain because anytime they want to go to a new site, they have to ask (and they want to go to a new siteall the time) and you have to grant access.
- Single password for forums, emails and such that parents have 100% access to. Similar strategies have to apply to MySpace/Facebook such as passwords that are available to parents, non open site or password protected site, parents create their own site and be buddies with their kids in order to monitor the kids activities. We keep the passwords for the kids in a text file that the kids and us have access to. Also, the kids don’t have email, MySpace/Facebook yet. Though, I’m not sure email will be all that important for all that much longer as that younger generations think texting and IM are much more effective than email.
- Talk to your kids. We talk to our kids all the time so that they are aware of dangers out there and are aware of why the rules exist. We talk so that we know what is going on in their lives and they know what is going on in their lives – this is a prime reason we had kids in the first place so this is easy!
- Make rules. Kids who don’t have rules think their parents don’t love them. Well, duh!
- The vast majority of sex offenders do not happen via the internet but rather come to the child via family and friends. Scary! Again, talk to your kids.
- Even though sex offenders may not happen very often over the internet, truly vulgar and truly pornographic information is easily (and maybe more importantly – accidentally) over the internet. Young kids are curious and will look and if they find, they may keep looking.
As you can see, there really isn’t anything that isn’t obvious.
The other thing that was probably true about the meeting is that the parents that showed up to the meeting were parents that already were aware or cared about this issue and probably already have taken some action regarding this topic. People who don’t go to these kinds of meetings are the ones who may not know what is going on and be at risk.
There were 3 sites that the detective thought would be useful to parents:
- SAFE.org
- MissingKids.com – according to the detective, the best and most informative site
- NetSmartz.com – according to the detective, mostly for younger childrent
I haven’t validated these sites yet but hope to at least look at the MissingKids.com site over the next few days.