Safer Internet Day February 14th 2012

A study prepared for the European Commission prior to Safer Internet Day 2009, gave U.K. parents top spot for their efforts to protect children online.  They are most likely to be using filtering software,  ( 77 % ) and most likely to talk to their children about what they do online ( 87 % ) . UK parents are among the most likely to stay near the children when they go online to check what sites they are visiting and remind them not to give out personal information. That said, children regard the internet as a great way to hunt for the material for homework,  keep in touch with friends, or buy music & games.   Remain positive, talk to your child, take an interest and try not to over-use the word no.  Try to persuade them to use a nickname in chat rooms .     Most schools have internet access these days and when your child goes on to further education or a job they will almost certainly need to be computer literate. For resources to help you advise your children, try the    Thinkuknow     website, run by the Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre ( C.E.O.P. ), originally  part of the Metropolitan Police and now a free-standing unit.                                                                                  Link to Thinkuknow Website C.E.O.P. was set up  in the early part of  2006 and by January 2010 it had rescued more than 500 vulnerable children and been involved in the arrest of over 800 adults seeking to harm children.    It is now a member of the Virtual Global Task Force, a group of law enforcement agencies around the World,  which includes Interpol and the US Department of Home-land Security.                                                                                    CEOP Homepage There are numerous charities out there providing resources:-                  Childnet International                      NSPCC                     Childline For filtering and monitoring software,  there is plenty out there,  all claiming to be the best  ! Try Netintelligence,  who are supplying the filtering software for a Government programme to supply computers that will be used by children under 14. The website gives really useful advice which is measured and concise. The software is available on a one month trial basis.                                                                                       Netintelligence Some mobile phones are internet capable,  so contact the phone service operator,  who will be able to supply a filter for the access service they provide.                 _____________________________________________________________ If you buy goods online,  usually the sale will not proceed unless you give the vendor your email address and then they will spam you until your head falls off ! !    There are many sites that will provide a temporary email address ( usually free, they are fed up with commercial spam as well  ).   Here is one that diverts emails to your private address,  without exposing the private address to the sender.  You can set the expiry date of the temporary address to anywhere between one hour and one month and at the end of the selected time, it is then automatically deleted.                                                                                              Link to Temporary Email Address               _________________________________________________________________ It has now been drummed into all of us not to give bank details to anyone,  even if they claim to be your bank !      However some banks (HSBC,  Coutts, Santander Group, Nat West, RBS) are offering their clients a free software called -  Trusteer  Rapport. This protects information sent from  your computer to a website,  such as access codes, credit card numbers etc.   It is also available from Trusteer's own site.                              Trusteer Rapport