According to a study published on Guard Child, more than 80% of teens said about their avoidable incidents online. They told their stories by ending up in deep cyber web, abused, or cyber bullied by strangers.
With that in mind, parents need to have a look at their children activities online. They should be aware of what their kids do online, participate and involvement in social media; and plan the protection strategy accordingly.
For the purpose, I am listing down steps to protect your children online. These tactics will help you track your children activities, implement protection measures, and avoid them perform unwanted activities on the Internet.
1. Step into what they do online
Having a check on their cyber activities will ensure protecting their safety online. To proceed with actionable steps, compile a list of places your kids use to visit online. Once done, actively check their logs and take protection measures accordingly. It will help you protect your kids on the Internet, actively, in a human style protection strategy.
2. Educate your children about basic security online
A list of do’s and don’ts will protect your kids online. Compile a list, teach your children about the ups and downs of using the internet. Teach them avoiding certain things will help them being safe, and similarly, ensure their knowledge with test scenarios, and instructions accordingly.
3. Use Android apps and Browser Add-ons
If your children have access to apps on smartphones, they may certainly fall short of avoiding bad apps, leading them to hold their breath while seeing unwanted things online. Believe, it’s a challenge for the parents to protect their kids privacy with smartphones and computer. For the phones, using a parental control application will help you protect your children, providing options such as SMS/Call Tracking, Web Tracking, App usage and tracking their children phone location. Similarly, browser ad-dons will help you protect your children from visiting unwanted areas of the Internet.
4. Block the unwanted websites
You can block the unwanted websites to protect your children. For this purpose, you can use blocking tools or configure it manually with editing your windows hosts file. In both ways, ensure checking the blocked sites after you finish setting up. You can also check the browser’s history records to see the visited websites. Blocking the websites will help you add more sites as you go. Just put the site in the list of blocked sites, and protect your kids from being landing on the unwanted sites.
5. Set a time frame for using the computers
Setting a time frame will help you avoid stress regarding your child protection on the Internet. In the end by this line, I am summing up the routine, and setting a time frame will help you keep focus on the specific routines on a daily basis. The internet security is hard, as child predators, cyber bullying agents and hackers; attacking your systems and kids have been reported as the trendy threats for online security.
Conclusion
As discussed above, focus on using technical tools. Also, focus on setting up a specific time frame for kids using computers or playing games online.
As a parent, if your budget allows you setting up a separate computer for the children only, you can cut off the internet access, install the safe applications and games, and lock the areas you don’t want them to have access to in the PC. This way, you approach a straight forward, more simpler way to protect your children by using human style tactics, avoiding technical complexities.
Finally, updating your knowledge with latest information will help you protect your children more efficiently. This includes keeping an eye on newly discovered threats, including viruses, Trojans, hacking methods and, take actions accordingly; to ensure your kids are safe on the Internet.