Why should I buy an Internet filter ?

It would be easy to let your child use the Internet as he or she wants; mistakenly thinking that no harm could essentially come out of it. The Internet is, after all, just a medium through which we can buy things, find out information and play games. Put like this, there seems to be little need to restrict our children's use of the Internet with an Internet filter, especially considering that there are so many other things they need protecting from first.

Some parents like to give their children as much freedom as possible; encouraging them to be responsible for their own decisions and the consequences of their actions. There is however, a limit for any parent, and at this point they start to exercise their parental right to restrict their child's activities for his or her own protection.

Once parents find out about the possible problems that the Internet can cause their children, and also quite how flexible Internet filters can be, they very often decide to exercise their parental rights, and turn to such software for help.

Parents should be aware about the issues relating to Internet safety and child protection. One does not need to get sensationalist to make parents consider installing an Internet filter onto their home computer. With a bit of research on the Internet; parents can find out all sorts of useful information about the troubles that the Internet can potentially cause children. Some of this might come as a surprise to some parents, and those that previous have not considered it necessary to restrict their child's access to the net might well decide that there is a need for it after all.

One of the primary, and most simple issue concerning your child's use of the Internet, is the shear amount of time that he or she spends on it. Children today spend an ever increasing proportion of their spare time behind the computer, more often than not surfing the web. Whilst in moderation this is not intrinsically a problem, in excess it can be hazardous for the child's all round mental and physical development. It is simply not what children are meant to do; sitting behind a computer for hours on end, instead of playing games that involve movement and socializing.

Another important issue is the material that children have access to over the Internet. Without the kind of control and protection that an Internet filter provides; a child can stumble across images and texts that almost every parent in the world will agree are not suitable for children. This problem is compounded by the fact that many of these inappropriate sites appear of their own accord, and then can be quite hard to get rid of.

No less big an issue (and potentially the most disastrous), derives from the opportunity the Internet gives to children to chat anonymously to anyone who has access to the web. This is possible through a variety of mediums, such as chat sites, messengers and blog sites. Whilst most of the people your child will talk to will be of a benelovent nature, there are a large number of people who use chat sites specifically to make contact with children, whilst pretending to be youngsters themselves, and then use this position to extract private information out of them. Sometimes they use the sites to flirt and play sexual games, and even sometimes to 'groom' children with the view of setting up a meeting.

Unfortunately, these people are often very adept at blending into chat groups, making it very hard for your children to differentiate between them and genuine children.

There are some people who think that Internet filters are just for religious types or overbearing parents, but that is really not true. They are in fact purchased by every layer of society; by people with a wide range of views, attitudes and moral standpoints. The reason why Internet filters are so popular amongst so many people, is because the degree of restriction that they bring to your computer and your child's use of the Internet can be completely customized to suit your needs. Internet filters are indeed very flexible.

Internet filtering software enables you to set the level of restriction that you want for your child (which will be based on your views, the age of your child and so on). You can, for instance, set your Internet filter so that your child can only use the net for a small period of time a day, and only has access to a few websites that you have specially selected. On the other end of the spectrum, however, you can give your child much longer access to the Internet each day, and let them have access to all sites except for a couple of specific websites that you have deemed inappropriate (perhaps, for instance, because your children spend far too much time on those sites).

Internet filters can help you to significantly reduce the risks of your children experiencing the problems as described above. With an Internet filter installed on your computer, you can fine tune how your computer is used, and keep it at a level of restriction suitable for you.

SoftForYou is a child protection software company that offers parents the highly acclaimed and popular Internet filter program iProtectYou. It enables you to set how long your child can use the Internet each day, which sites he or she can access, which chat programs can be accessed and much more. Importantly, iProtectYou enables you to set different levels of restriction for different users. This means that you can set up the restrictions according to the level of protection that you want to give each of your children; according to their age and their needs.

Online predators

The Internet is just a haven for online predators. It offers them 2 big advantages: Firstly, it is completely anonymous, and secondly, it offers an unprecedented level of access to an endless supply of children and teenagers who are actively seeking to chat online. According to the Online victimization research carried out by NCMEC (2000), one in five children who use chat rooms have been approached over the Internet by pedophiles. It is the easiest thing in the world to login to a chat site and pretend to be a teenager from the other side of the county; when in reality you are a guy in his 40's from the same town. Chatting with friends online - via services like MySpace and Bebo - is beginning to take over from watching TV as the main hobby of many young people. Much of the chat is happening in what are called 'community websites'. Unlike chat rooms, they are not open to everyone: each person has to be invited to join in.

In the course of a normal getting to know each conversation, it is then no more difficult to elicit everyday information, such as what school the child or teenager goes to, and where he or she goes to in the evenings. Online predators come in different shapes and sizes, and have differing expectations from their online predatory experience. There are the more 'benign' online predators; who get their kicks simply from simply communicating on a normal level with children and teenagers, and who do not being sexual context into the conversations. This is not too much to worry about, other than its spooky factor. Unfortunately, however, a much greater amount of online predators want to take the relationship onto a higher level. As a rule, this involves asking the child to take part in some kind of light sexual conversational flirtation. This can involve talking about some sexual issue in a roundabout way, without getting too direct. Often, online predators will move onto the next level if they have success eliciting such information. Now they start intensifying such conversation, and may even ask for pictures of the child of a sexual nature; in some state of undress for instance. Fortunately, this is the point (if they haven't already) that some children and teenagers become sufficiently wary so as to become more cautious with what information they share.

From a parents perspective, it may seem impossible that their child would enter into a virtual conversation of such nature with a stranger. This of course negates the fact that our children make very different interpretations to the same events as us, and what for us can seem like a cold clear fact that out well brought up children will understand, can by them be perceived as something blown of out proportion and not relevant in their case anyhow. Even if a teenager treats her parents words seriously, things can rapidly change late at night when the guy sending flirtatious messages is a 'handsome young lad from California.' The issue that should be of most concern for parents is the number of online predators who will go as far as trying to arrange a meeting with the child that they have been in contact with. Such individuals often have considerable experience, and for them it is not difficult to coerce children into a meeting. According to the Youth Internet survey, 2004, in the period of that year, 1 in 33 children received aggressive sexual solicitation; in which the predator tried to fix a meeting with the child. As it can be seen, this is a real issue, and something that parents should certainly be aware of, and consider when establishing rules concerning how their child can use the Internet. According to the same survey, it was shown that only 25% of children and adolescents who encountered a solicitation told their parents, and it can be very difficult for parents to control their child's use of such sites, as the majority of children and adolescents use occurs at home, right after school, when working parents aren't at home.

Software technology can help you. Its not the magic cure for all online predator ills, but, combined with education and discipline, it is a big step in the right direction towards protecting your children from the problems and dangers associated with Internet use and the computer as a whole. There are different types of software that can assist you in different ways. Internet filter and monitor programs can help you keep an eye on what your child is doing on the Internet, and enable you to establish filters so that certain chat sites cannot be accessed by your children, or so that certain words cannot be received or sent through chat sites. The best filtering programs are very flexible, which means that you can set your level of filtering which corresponds exactly with your needs. Computer control programs enable you to control exactly when and how your computer is used. You can set the times when the computer can be used as whole, or each of its individual components, such as the Internet, certain programs, and the CD Rom. In this way you can restrict computer use to times when you are at home, so that you can keep an eye on how your child is using the computer. Such programs are also great for parents whose children spend too long on the computer.