Today is Internet Safety Day, a day dedicated to raising awareness of the safety of you and your children online. As our article this morning detailed, there is plenty of confusion between adults and children regarding what information we should be releasing on the Internet. A campaign aimed at children as young as five has also been released today, using cartoons to show that people on the Internet are not always who they say they are.
Organised by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), the campaign hopes to keep young children well-informed, so they know what to look out for when they grow up. Originally the CEOP only focused on secondary school students, but as the Internet has become more accessible to younger and younger children they've started to target primary school students.
AOL have come up with their own set of guidelines too, including information on parental controls, the importance of online security and tips on how to monitor your children. You can see them below.
- Know what your kids are doing online and whom they're communicating with – talk to them about their experiences online. Consider placing your PC in the family room
- Get tools which help you keep kids safer online, parental controls help to shield kids from unsuitable content and give you more control over your children's online experience
- Kids can stumble across unsuitable information or images online – speak to your kids openly, which will help your child to come to you if he or she feels uncomfortable. They can report it to us through our report button and there are also resources for further reassurance with the NSPCC (0808 800 5000) and Childline (0800 1111) or CEOP
- If you see illegal content online contact the Internet Watch Foundation straightaway
- Find out more about protecting your PC
- AOL's award winning free Parental Controls are now available to anyone on the web – it doesn't matter who provides your Internet connection
- You'll need to register and get a free login and password for yourself and each of your kids. This means, each time your kids log-in, AOL Parental Controls will know who they are and they will only be able to look at content that is safe for them
- If you find AOL's Kids Only (ages 0 – 12) too restrictive, you can put them on a Young Teens login