Your Child's Safety

The most important factors in keeping your child safe on-line are the utilization of appropriate blocking software and/or parental controls, along with open, honest discussions with your child and monitoring his/her on-line activity.

There are dangers in every part of our society. By educating your children to these dangers and taking appropriate steps to protect them, they can benefit from the wealth of information now available on-line. Here are some tips that will help keep you and your children safe:

• Communicate: talk to your child about sexual victimization and potential on-line danger. Spend time with your children on-line. Have them teach you about their favorite on-line destinations;
  
  
• Keep the computer in a common room in the house, not in your child's bedroom. It is much more difficult for a computer-sex offender to communicate with a child when the computer screen is visible to a parent or another member of the household;
  
  
• Utilize parental controls provided by your service provider and/or blocking software. While electronic chat can be a great place for children to make new friends and discuss various topics of interest, it is also prowled by computer sex offenders. Use of chat rooms, in particular, should be heavily monitored. While parents should utilize these mechanisms they should not totally rely on them;
  
  
• Always maintain access to your child's on-line account and randomly check his/her email. Be up front with your child about your access and reasons why;
  
  
• Teach your child the responsible use of the resources on-line. There is much more to the on-line experience than chat rooms;
  
  
• Find out what computer safeguards are utilized by your child's school, the public library, and at the homes of your child's friends. These are all places, outside your normal supervision, where your child could encounter an on-line predator; and
  
  
• Understand, even if your child was a willing participant in any form of sexual exploitation, that he/she is not at fault and is the victim. The offender always bears the complete responsibility for his or her actions.

Instruct your children

• To never arrange a face to face meeting with someone they met on-line;
  
• To never upload (post) pictures of themselves onto the Internet or on-line service to people they do not personally know;
  
• To never give out identifying information such as their name, home address, school name, or telephone number;
  
• To never download pictures from an unknown source, as there is a good chance there could be sexually explicit images;
  
• To never respond to messages or bulletin board postings that are suggestive, obscene, belligerent, or harassing;
  
• That whatever they are told on-line may or may not be true.

Source: FBI Parent Guide to Internet Safety