Keep your children safe online
Online safety is a topic that comes up often on The Gadget Guru, so Darren has put together this short guide to keeping your children safe.
Protecting your kids online
In this cyber-age, kids know more about technology and the web than most parents do. The upside is that they have a great learning tool at their fingers-tips but the downside is there are lots of nasty people out there willing to take advantage of the vulnerable and naive.
First of all, decide whether your children are old enough to go online. There are many ways to block the content they can access but ultimately it is your responsibility to protect your children, not the internet service providers or software makers.
If your children are young, keep the computer in the living room so you can keep an eye on what they are doing.
Turn on Parental controls
Most operating systems have good safety tools. Set up an account for your kids, on your computer and lock down access to any adult related sites Details on how to do this are available on Microsoft's website.
If you have a Mac, check out their security advice.
Then add a password to your personal account so they can’t access the web using your settings. This means you can carry on surfing without being blocked from any sites.
There is commercially available software available that can block access to undesirable content including:
Cyber Patrol
Cyber Sitter
Use the free trial to decide which works best for you. Make sure your anti-virus software is up to date, and that you have protection against spy and malware. Free software is available from our free downloads page.