Keep your kids safe online - Google tips
Two to three billion pages are uploaded to the web everyday, which makes monitoring the content on the web a pretty hard task. However, the following tips from search engine giant Google will go some way to making sure your child remains safe online.
Know where your kids go online - Sit with young children and navigate the Internet with them, the Internet can be a dangerous place! If you kids are older, try sending some boundaries for what they can and can’t look at.
Use sharing controls - Many sites now feature user-generated content, Facebook is a perfect example. Sharing controls allow you to control who sees your profile/page. Be sure to teach kids how to keep their information private and protect themselves.
Take a look at our article to show you how to protect your child on Facebook
Teach kids to communicate responsibly – Teach your children to treat any virtual communication the same as face to face conversation. If you wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, don’t text it, email it or post it on the Internet in anyway.
Protect passwords - Drill it into them… never give out your password to anyone else. Be sure you avoid ticking “remember me” on public computers, like at school. Depending on the settings of the computer this may mean the username and password is left there for the next user to simply login with.
View all content critically - Just because it’s on the Internet doesn’t make it true. Teach your child how to tell a reputable source from a work fantasy.
Set up filters - Google’s SafeSearch scans the web for websites containing content of a sexual nature and removes them from search results. No filter can be 100% accurate, but Goggle’s SafeSearch should eliminate most unwanted sites.
There are three SafeSearch settings:
- Moderate filtering (your default SafeSearch setting),
- Strict filtering (applies SafeSearch filtering to all your search results including images)
- No filtering.
Simply visit google.co.uk/preferences to adjust your settings.
Activate malware and virus detection - Malware (malicious software) is software designed to damage a computer system. To prevent your child becoming exposed to malware Google’s software pack offers malware detection. It identifies sites that are trying to install malware and points them out with a warning message in your search results. Google’s pack also contains a number of other handy free and safe tools which work to keep your computer safe.
