How can parents increase children's safety on the Internet?

There are actions parents can take on their home computer to restrict what children do.

1. Talk to your children about what they are playing or watching.
2. Make sure that children do not have administrative access on the computer. It is very easy to set up separate user accounts for everyone who uses the computer
   Once that is done the following become possible
3. Activate Parental controls in the web browser. In Internet Explorer go to tools>Internet Options>Content>Parental Controls and also to Content Advisor. Other browsers such as Firefox have their own features
4. Install web filtering/blocking software such as Cyber Patrol or Web Nanny
5. Use child-friendly Search Engines.
6. Find out as much as you can visiting some of these sites:

• Think U know is a fantastic website for you as parents to read for your own information and for you to look at alongside your child.

• UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) - The Click Clever, Click Safe campaign has been organised by UKCCIS, a new body concerned with e-safety set up by the DCSF and 150 other organisations as well as individuals. The site has a wealth of information.

• Digizen is a government website which has a lot of information for adults and children on these different social networking sites, with detailed evalautions of them. You can download copies of all of their reports and documents but the Internet is changing rapidly all the time and it is a good idea to revisit these sites to keep up to date.
• CHATDANGER
• CBBC Stay Safe

• Childnet International

• Hectors World. A series of child friendly stories to learn about internet safety.  The Hector Protector site in New Zealand is sponsored by a charity called Netsafe. They have developed the Hector button, which you download and install onto your computer and it will float on the screen. Children can press the button whenever they come across anything on the net which they find upsetting or worrying.