guidelines for kiddies

Found some guidelines regarding Internet's safety for children.

No internet access unless parent or guardian is home within visual contact of computer screen

Who gets to use the computer when and for how long.

This person can connect to the internet using only this username. This is especially useful when someone younger than you is using the same computer and they have different settings for the filtering software installed.

Teach the younger family members how to recognize, avoid, and get away from the bad people online.

Practice as a family how to get away from a stranger when they approach you or will not leave you alone in your neighborhood and on the internet in a chatroom, through email or instant messaging.

Introduce your online friends to your parents just as you do with your everyday friends.

Don't arrange or agree to a face-to-face meeting or phone conversation with another computer user (online playmate, friend, or penpal) without your parent or adult at both the acceptance and the meeting itself even if they say they are in serious trouble and need your help right now.

Don't buy or sign-up for anything online without your parent's or guardian's supervision.

Watch younger brothers and sisters when they are connected to the internet. Be sure that they are not talking to strangers or are visiting a "bad" website.

Keep reminding younger children about the meaning of "do not tell anyone private information". Information that every family member shares - like allowances, where and when parents work, where parents shop or what you did during school vacation - does not seem to be private information to younger children. Keep explaining why they should not tell their online friends about these things.

Only visit websites that can be accessed from a particular folder on your computer.

Tell your parent or guardian when anyone uses bad language or says things that make you uncomfortable.

Don't answer email from a stranger.

Tell your parent when someone asks you to keep their conversations, friendship or emails a secret.

Never send to any person or post at any website pictures or files without your parent there. If the person asking for pictures is someone you met online or a stranger, tell them NO!

If you use a service where your username is the first part of the email address, such as AOL or MSN, consider usernames for all persons under 18 (for example: know-it-all or bluefish) that do not indicate your name, gender, age or race.

Assign a family member on a regular basis (weekly, monthly) to download and install anti-virus software updates and security patches for your operating system and all programs installed.

Taken from here.

Another addition(something I thought of during the whole assignment), parents should set a kids search page as the default searching page such as yahoo's own yahooligans.com
I used that back when I was in standard school and it was fun enough for me, so it should be fun enough to use for children too. The adults can type in their own search page if they were to use the internet, No hassle.

What do you guys think?



Ida K.