The ultimate defense against exposing your child to inappropriate material on the Internet is to have a computer for schoolwork that is not connected to the Internet. If your family updates the home computer to a newer model the old computer can be used for word processing, spreadsheets, and other basic functions without the distractions of instant messenger and email. If you have such a computer, it can be placed in a quiet area of the home for study and writing.
If you have only one computer that is shared by the entire family it should be located in a common area that has a high traffic pattern. A computer connected to the Internet should not be located in a child's bedroom. Kitchens and family rooms are choice areas. The constant and unpredictable passing of family members will reduce the probability a child will involve themselves in inappropriate activity and increase the likelihood someone else in the family will observe any intended or unintended inappropriate activity.
Clear rules of use should be established for any child that will use the Internet. The basic questions of Who, What, and When should be clearly answered.
Who is allowed to use the Internet connected computer?
Children of different ages should have different Rules of Use. For example, very young children might not be allowed to use an Internet connected computer under any circumstances. A slightly older child might be permitted supervised use only. An even older child might be permitted unsupervised use.
What are the permissible activities when using the computer?
There should be a clear statement of permissible activities. For example, you might permit your child to use an Internet connected computer in your home to search the Internet for information relating to school work, or visit a teacher's web site. However, you might not permit the child to install or use Instant Messenger or Email. You might permit the child to listen to music on the computer from the CD-ROM drive, but not permit them to install and use peer-to-peer music download programs such as Napster or Kazaa. The important thing is to establish the rules for each child, discuss them, and apply them.
When can the computer be used?
You should establish times when your children can use the Internet computer and specify the types of activity they may engage in. For example, you might tell your high school age child they can use the computer at any time specifically for writing papers or doing research for school work. You might also say that they can use email two times a day for no longer than 30 minutes. You might also say that Instant Messenger can only be used between 8PM and 8:30PM. The important thing is to set the rules, discuss them with the child, and apply them.
Particularly for younger children, contracts can be very useful to set out the guidelines for using the Internet and provide them with actions they might take in certain circumstances. An example of a contract produced by the Children's Partnership for a younger child can be viewed by Clicking Here.
A parent should practice the "pop-in" when a child is using an Internet connected computer, by walking by the computer area randomly. When you "pop-in" you should be aware of your child closing windows or moving the full screen window to the icon tray at the bottom of the computer screen. They can icon windows with remarkable speed, but if you are aware of the icon tray you will be able to see what was open just as you approached.
Newer operating systems, such as Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Mac OSX support multiple user logins. Parents should hold the Administrator account name and password. It should not be shared with children. You can then create additional accounts for your children to use. There are some control techniques that can be applied in this manner to the basic operating system, and applications such as Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, and others.
If you use Windows you should visit Microsoft's page of links to help protect children at the following address. It gives specific instructions on how to setup individual user accounts and set specific controls in applications.
http://www.microsoft.com/security/articles/childrenonline.asp
Web browsers such as Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator maintain a history of web sites that are visited. For example, the default settings in Internet Explorer are to maintain 20 days of history. If you click on the History button at the top of the web browser screen a column will open up on the left side. In that column will be the last 20 days of web sites visited. You can browse through that list to see what sites are being visited.
For specific instructions on how to set this up in Internet Explorer visit: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/using/howto/history/button.asp
Older children quickly learn that the history of their web browsing will be stored on the local computer and can be viewed. To prevent this from happening they will often reset the history settings to maintain 1 or 0 days of history. In addition, they will delete the history. You can control this by setting up individual accounts as described in the Individual Accounts section.
If you have not yet setup Individual accounts you can still get a sense of what users of the computer are looking at - even if the History has been deleted.
When you visit a web site on the Internet you are not really viewing the original copy on the hosting server. Rather, a copy of the page you requested is downloaded to your computer to a temporary internet files directory and you are viewing it from there. These files are maintained on your computer until they exceed a designated amount of space, then they are replaced newest for oldest.
The result is that a large amount of files are stored in these directories. So, you can search the computer to find these web pages and photographs.
To do this you simply search the computer as follows:
Click on Start
Click on Search
Click on Files or Folders
In the
block that says "Search for files or folders named:"
Type in the following
*.htm
Click on Search Now
Your computer will then search the entire hard
drive for any files that have the file extension .htm (web pages)
They will
appear in the box to the right. You can scan them and sort them there by date
and time. This will give you a sense of what types of sites are being visited
and when they were visited.
When you have finished searching for *.htm
files you should then search for picture files. Most web pages are really
made up of several pictures. They are identified by the file extension
.jpg and .gif.
To search for them you should follow the same instructions as above but
subsititute *.jpg for *.htm and then do the same with *.gif.
This will also
give you an indication of what types of web sites are being visited.
The temporary internet files can also be deleted by your child. Once again, this is why it is good to setup Individual Accounts on your computer and restrict what functions they can perform.
It is very important that you install and maintain Antivirus Software on your computer. This is to protect the entire family from a host of problems.
The major vendors for Antivirus software are Symantec (Norton Antivirus) and McAfee. There are many others that can provide very good antivirus protection. If you are going to protect your system from harmful worms, viruses, and trojan horses you must:
1. Buy and install an antivirus program
2. Ensure you renew
the annual license. These systems depend on lists that are updated near
daily. When your annual subscription runs out you can no longer dowload the
lists. Shortly thereafter your system will no longer be protected.
3. Schedule
LiveUpdate to run daily to obtain up-to-date lists of definitions.
4.
Schedule Full Scans of your computer at least weekly.
5. Enable Realtime
protection and email protection.
A growing problem for many Internet users is the irritation of pop-ups. Pop-ups are caused by "spyware" that is redirecting your computer to advertising pages. They are irritating and sometimes harmful in content.
To prevent this problem from occurring on your computer you should be careful about the sites you visit and the responses you give to information boxes that might appear.
You can set options in Internet Explorer to be more restrictive and protect your privacy.
You can install third party software specifically for the purpose of finding
and eliminating spyware from your computer. Ad-Aware is an award
winning freeware that can be installed on your computer and clear it of
spyware. You can obtain it for free by visiting http://www.twocows.com/
and searching for
Ad-Aware. Another freeware program that can be obtained at twocows is
SpyBot. It too is very effective in finding and eliminating spyware from
you computer.
Another type of pop-up that might occur on your computer is one that appears when you are not browsing the Internet. At any hour a screen with an advertisement or some other irritating message might appear, normally in a gray rectangular box. These messages are being sent as broadcasts through a network. You can prevent them by a number of methods. It is best to review Microsoft's article: "Messenger Service Window That Contains an Internet Advertisement Appears" at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=330904
Parental controls can be very effective in limiting a child's access to many activities on your computer. The major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) AOL and MSN have built-in parental controls that are very effective.
Instructions for setting up parental controls for AOL can be found at http://www.aol.com/info/parentcontrol.html
Instructions
for setting up parental controls for MSN can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/security/articles/childrenonline.asp
If you are a COMCAST or Verizon DSL broadband user you will need to use the Internet Explorer controls and operating system user accounts to enforce control or you can purchase a third party product for this purpose.
PC Magazine conducted a review of several parental control applications. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses. CyberSitter won the Editor's Choice Award. The results of that review can be viewed by Clicking Here.
Parental controls can be very effective in controlling a broad array of your child's activities on the computer. The amount of time they can spend on the computer, the times they can be on, the sites they can visit, instant messenger or not, etc. etc. The key to using them successfully is the parent's inclination to understand how to use them. If you are going to ask your child how to set it up you may as well not set it up at all.
This is a very detailed monitoring tool. You can record every screen your child sees and every letter they type. You can store it and review it at your convenience or you can set it up to permit you to observe their activity live from another computer in the house or at the office.
There are trust and privacy issues in many of the categories listed here, but this category represents the greatest challenge.
Two popular applications in this category are Kid Defender http://www.kiddefender.com/ and Spector Pro http://www.spectorsoft.com/
You should also know that these tools can be used against you by your child
or a hacker. They are commonly used to record key strokes in order to
obtain passwords. If your child is skilled in computer technology and
wants to obtain your password this is a common way to do it.
Firewalls are a very powerful tool in defending your computer or home network. They can stop unwanted communications, deter hackers, and filter web sites.
Particularly if you are using a broadband connection (e.g. Comcast or Verizon DSL), you should have some type of firewall in place. A software firewall is adequate for a single computer. Windows XP has a built-in firewall function. Zone Alarm Pro http://www.zonelabs.com/ and Norton Personal Firewall http://www.symantec.com/ are two popular software firewalls. PC Magazine conducted a recent review of this type of application. The review can be viewed at http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1370707,00.asp
If you have more than one computer in your home (especially wireless) or wish to improve security with relative ease you should purchase a hardware router/gateway/firewall device. They are cheap (in many cases under $100) and effective. Particularly if you have several computers in the home, you should have a hardware router/gateway/firewall. There are a variety of vendors out there for these products. Netgear http://www.netgear.com/ is a large manufacturer of hardware devices that can improve the security of your home network.
If you are not comfortable about the security of your home network. If you feel you need help in implementing the solutions recommended in this paper you should consider obtaining professional technical support. Massachusetts Technology Solutions, Inc. is a small company that specializes in home office and small business network installations and repair. Visit our website to see the many services that can help you.
Massachusetts Technology Solutions, Inc.
info@masstechsolutions.com
http://www.masstechsolutions.com
(508) 259-6206