Here is a video that shows how Sentry Parental Controls can be used to monitor instant messages, myspace activity and many more.

Popularity: 46% [?]

If your child is being harassed online you should take it very seriously and first find out how it all started. It is often referred to as cyber bullying and has become more and more serious over the years. There are a few main areas where cyber bullying happens most often and its often involving teenagers. Chat rooms, instant messaging services, and social networking sites are all among the top for cyber bullying and account for almost all of the online harassment. Emails can often become targets for harassing emails and often involve teenagers again.

If your teenager is being harassed or you think they are being harassed you should ask questions to become more aware of the situation. If its targeted through emails then you can easily block where the messages are coming from and you can also save and forward the messages to your ISP who often will have policies regarding this and have it looked into. Social networks like MySpace and Facebook are often used for harassing teens online and they can also be reported to the staff and support team of these websites and often they will take care of it.

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Popularity: 45% [?]

Typically allowing children to have their own email address is a personal family thing. Some families don’t find the idea of their children having their own email account to be freighting in anyway, whereas other families couldn’t picture their children having their own email accounts. Generally young children should share an email account with the family address. This way if they want to register for something and need to supply an email you will be able to keep tabs on what they are doing.

As they become more independent and older you can allow them to have their own email address. There are still options however though so you can still see the mail being received and sent in the family inbox. This way you can ask you children about any suspicious emails they are receiving or replying to. There is lots of spam emails being sent to every email created and you should set-up a spam filter for your child’s email. This will save a lot of hassles from any unwanted mail you don’t want your child receiving. You can also set filters for fraudulent looking emails trying to capture personal details to be used for fraud.

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Popularity: 61% [?]

The Xbox 360 console has become a feature in many children and teenagers bedrooms or game rooms the past few years and a lot of parents have been wondering if these consoles are safe for their kids.

There are a few ways in which your child can become unsafe in an Xbox 360 game. The first way is if the child plays on Xbox Live then you will want to keep an eye on how they are playing and interacting. There are a lot of foul mouths on the Xbox Live headsets and this can become rather unsafe language for children under the age of 13. You can prevent this by allowing them to play without the headset which isn’t quite as fun but at least it is better then being cussed at all game. A lot of users know how to speak to people though and 80% of the time you won’t need to worry about the headset becoming a problem.

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Popularity: 100% [?]

Children these days have a complete mind to there own and with so many different things on the internet your children are sure to find some naughty stuff. It’s important you as a parent understand how you can tell if your child is viewing inappropriate websites and also how to stop them from doing so. You can easily tell by your child’s behaviour is he or she is misbehaving while on the computer. Here are a few key things to look for if you think your child is viewing inappropriate material. 

1. They close all browsers when you approach the screen
2. History is always deleted when they get off computer
3. If computer is in common room, look for weird random glances and then keystrokes

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Popularity: 77% [?]

With all the sketchy content on the internet today it’s important for parents to have a firm grasp on their computers and what is accessible by using there computer. For user’s fortunate enough to have Windows Vista you will notice a wealth of internet parental locks. It may seem rather confusing to understand at first but it’s easy to set-up and use.

Vistas parental controls help you the parent in being able to limit what your children have access to online. It’s important you know a little bit about computers and that’s why I’m here to help you. The very first thing you must do to utilize the parental controls is turn it on for your user account. Once you have enabled the parental controls you will be able to have 100% control over what websites you allow and block your children from viewing.

Steps to using the parental controls:

1. Click start menu on Vista and open the Control Panel, once here double click the accounts menu and then on parental controls.
2. Choose the user account you wish to set the parental controls for.
3. Click ON to enable the controls for the specific user account. Now that they’re on you can use them to block access.
4. Double click on Windows Vista Web Filter, choose to block some websites and select Edit the control and block list.
5. Enter the address to the website you wish to block.
6. Select to block adult content automatically.
7. Turn on activity reporting to view computer usage of the user accounts of the computer.

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Popularity: 82% [?]

With the ease of access to pornographic images and video on the internet it’s very important you understand how you can protect your kids from viewing it. You can find out if your children have by viewing pornography by simply viewing your history, although most will know how to delete the history especially in this day in age. There are also programs out there that you can purchase to detect any pornography saved to your hard drive or computer files, which in other cases would be impossible to find. The programs range in price but they are not very expensive if you think what it’s preventing.

There are numerous ways you can stop your children or at least limit them from viewing pornography. I have compiled a few tips you can use to help aid your prevention.

1. Put the computer in common area of household where screen can be seen
2. Make your child aware of the problems associated with pornography
3. Download software preventing it from being viewed
4. Use one of many free parental controls on the internet
5. Let only allowed websites be viewed on the internet

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Popularity: 67% [?]

MySpace is one of the biggest Social Networking websites on the internet right now and has been for some time now. They have owned the majority of the users for years and although it is shrinking now it still is a huge social site with millions and millions of people from across the world. With this site being such a popular haven for people it is very important to understand that there are a lot of people on the site who mean no good, and you will need to know how to keep your children safe while on this site.

Talk to your children about the types of people online and let them be aware of some of the things that have happened to other children there age. It’s important they know what can happen if you want to make sure they will follow the right safety guidelines. You as a parent can do your job by looking over a few of the features on your children’s profile, here are a few of the things you will want to look out for.

1. Make sure their profile is on private at all times
2. Don’t allow children to accept requests from people they don’t know
3. Show children how to report people
4. Hide child’s online status, this will make them appear offline at all times

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Popularity: 73% [?]

Parental Control Software allows parents to control what their children are able to access on the computer.  Parental Control Software is also employed to filter content for children on the Internet.  Many times parents are scared or worried that their children can access things such as online gambling or pornography. 

Parental control software is closely linked to content control software.  Both disallow a certain group of user’s access to information that others do not want them to see.  Many companies use content controls to prevent employees from surfing the Internet at work.

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Popularity: 65% [?]

Monitoring what your child does on the Internet can be a challenging task.  You as a parent often have to be proactive to make sure your child is being safe on the Internet and is not making poor choices or being followed around by Cyber Bullies. 

One of the easiest and most common sense ways to make sure your children are using the computer as you would wish is to put it in a high traffic area.  That way you or someone else will likely see whatever they are doing on the computer and can question them if you see something amiss.  

Another simple tip is to check your computers browsing history.  This is very simple and will allow you to check for kids who are not too tech savvy.  If your children are a bit smarter and know what they are doing this step might not work out for you at all and you might need to move on to the next step.  

A third step is to install parental control software.  This software will allow you to see each and every site visited on your computer by your child.  It will also allow you to block certain sites or categories of sites that you do not want your child to visit. 

Fourthly, if you see your child acting very strange when you walk by the computer, they might be trying to hide something.  You can see this by your child minimizing windows or closing them entirely when you walk.  It will be fairly obvious.

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Popularity: 78% [?]