Hazel Southam
In a British survey last year, almost one million children claimed to have been “upset” by something they had found on the Internet. Forty per cent said that they had found something “rude”.
Another poll showed that 56% of British Internet users are concerned about pornography and 75% will not let their children use the Internet alone, for fear of what they might discover, or who might discover them via disguised e-mails.
Unfortunately there are many pornographic sites which have deliberately chosen names very close to innocent, popular subjects. For example, if your children are looking for the Spice Girls website, a little mistyping could take them to a site that is highly unsuitable.
What to do? One solution may lie in your Internet provider. America OnLine (AOL), for example, provides parental control as part of its monthly packages. In South Africa, this kind of direct intervention has not been adopted. But M-Web, for example, does recommend well-known software packages such as Net Nanny and Cyberpatrol.
On AOL, kids can surf pre-screened sites from the Net on a “kids only” account, which cuts out upsetting ones. It provides dos and don’ts for children, including advising them “never to meet up with an online friend offline, unless Mum or Dad goes with you”.
Adults can restrict access to specific activities, including chat rooms and different websites and news groups. You can check up on what they’re looking at in the “history” section, and argue the point when they get home later.
A free 30-day trial of Net Nanny can be downloaded. With this system you can exclude sites you don’t want your children to see. However, type in a word like “sex” on an exclusion list and it will also exclude Middlesex, Essex, and Wessex.
More sophisticated systems include WeBlocker, which works well for a wide age range, not just children, and so also cuts out subjects like drugs, alcohol and gambling.
KidControl is a snoop programme. It keeps a log of a day’s activities on the computer including shots of what’s on screen at certain times.
Another British answer to this problem comes in the form of SurfontheSafeside.com, which recently launched an Internet filter service to deny access to nine million obscene and violent websites. It costs 2 per month to subscribe to a list that is updated each week. It is unique in the United Kingdom and is based on a black list that users can update.
Alexander Best, managing director, says: “Having a black list seemed the best approach because it combined the balance of freedom of information and protection and is very extensive. On a professional level, if I haven’t made that choice [to look at pornography], then I don’t want that thrown at me. For my children, I really don’t want that.”
SafeKids.com and SafeTeens.com have advice lists for teenagers and children about using the Net safely. They talk teenagers through how to get on to the Internet and the more wholesome and educational sites that they can find. Last week another site, KZuk.net, was launched claiming to be the world’s first free and completely safe ISP for children.
Computer giant Hewlett-Packard is also getting into the protection business. On March 1 it will launch a private Internet owned and managed by SilverTech Inc. The idea is to provide concerned parents with a safe, fun, educational environment where their kids can play, learn and chat for a small monthly fee on the aptly named eKids network.
If you still bump into Internet nasties, while surfing, one final option is to pass on information of dodgy sites to the Internet Watch Foundation so others don’t encounter the same problem as you. In its first year, the IWF received complaints about 5E000 items on the Net and is committed to dealing with them.
Its stated aim for this year is to set up a new international labelling and filtering system to protect children.