Being a parent, you must watch over your kids’ Internet usage and be aware of the danger lurking behind. While browsing the Internet, your children could be exposed to online predators, online frauds or scams, objectionable content, cyberbullying, hackers with viruses and Trojans and many other threats. To protect and control your kids from hackers and malicious Internet users, parental control software are devised with diverse features and functions. Hence, you need to select the right parental control software to be able to gain complete control over your kids’ Internet browsing. There are several factors you need to take under consideration to make the decision. You need to be informed of the significance of those factors, and then it is very easy to pick the best parental control software.
The age of your children
Younger kids are less tech savvy as compared to kids in their adolescence or pre-adolescence. Hence, you do not need complex parental control program for monitoring their Internet activities. For monitoring the Internet activities of an adolescent, choose the right parental control software that features tools like keylogger, screenshots etc. Programs with basic parental control tools are CyberPatrol, NetNanny, IAMBigBrother etc. that are perfectly suitable to monitor over younger kids’ web browsing. These programs are more focused to block content than to filter it. However, for older tech savvy children, you need to get more powerful and feature-rich computer monitoring programs such as WebWatcher or SpyAgent. These have been proven effective for teens with more proactive monitoring.
Eye on social networking sites & updates
All kids are smart enough to have a social networking presence. In a recent study, kids under 13 years of age are creating their profiles on social networking sites by camouflaging their actual age. You must include, most frequently, social networking sites among kids such as Orkut, Facebook, Twitter etc. As they spend consistent hours on their profile, they are exposed to inappropriate content or behavior, cruel or threatening users. You also need to monitor the language and verbose used by your kids and their contacts, kinds of file they share and view. Parental control software can be used to focus on these social networking sites and those record kids’ activities using tools such as screenshots, instant message recording and keyloggers.
Remote data viewing
Make sure that during some point of the day, you find time to sit down and check the data. It is better to wind up all your work and check the data every night. Moreover, you can also monitor over your child’s PC from a distance. Get the parental control software that will enable you to check on your children’s computer and their Internet use from your work system or from any other computer. Along with Internet browsing, you should check for instant messages and e-mails as your kids spend long hours in instant messages too. Check for e-mail attachments while you are checking for e-mails.
Website blocking or website filtering
Website blocking is the process in which you can pick a website and get it blocked. This is a pretty simple process. On the other hand, website filtering is a complex process that involves your monitoring and sending alerts on your kids’ online behaviors. Consider this filtering process for older kids while website blocking is safe for younger kids.
Also check out the Windows 7 Parental Control Tool