Parental filtering software - Guide to Child Internet Filter

This article will guide parents on what features to look for before buying parental filtering software program. But before proceeding further, I like to emphasize that in order to provide safe Internet experience to children, nothing can replace the internet education. Though this does not undermine the importance of internet filter. Following are the guidelines that parent should adhere before buying internet filter.

Filters harmful content: Filtering out the harmful content is the vital part of a good parental filtering software. By harmful content, I mean web sites that display adult content, sell illegal drugs, promote anti social activities etc… Most child internet filter provides a list of categories that they, pay attention on those categories before buying an internet filter.

Control what children can download: Many web sites provide children to download illegal or pirates material such as P2P file sharing, MP3, EXE, WMV, etc…, which must be stopped or otherwise spyware will infect your computer. Good child internet filter gives control to parents as what to download and what not to.

Blocks Personal Info: Children have tendency to share all their personal information such as their age, name, address etc… on their blogs and on social networking sites. Online predators can easily elicit all the personal information from children easily to perform their heinous crime. Furthermore, online fraudsters can also use their personal information to perform identity theft. Child internet filter program must block passing any such personal information.

Read my review on Net Nanny Software - Family Internet Filter

Works with your ISP: Many ISPs such as AOL provide some level of parental control therefore, before buying child internet filter verify that your internet service providers works in conjunction with the internet filter that you are purchasing, otherwise you would be wasting your money.

Unique profile for each children or user: If you have more than one child, and depending upon their age, they may have their own surfing habits. We as parents probably may want to access internet sites depending upon their age. For example, there are many website built for 4-6 age of kids, then there are websites for children of 14-17 of age. By having a capability to define the Internet access based on the age profile is best way to go. Furthermore, there are websites that we as parents visits, but not prefer our children to visit based on the subjective nature of the website. Or there are websites that we as parents visits for performing online shopping or banking, but restricted for children use Having a unique profile for each user helps to achieve exactly this.

Time Control Internet is very addictive for children, and therefor, parents prefer to limit their children access to internet. Time control feature helps parents to schedule the internet access for their children. Internet filter also provides option to schedule internet access for each family member.

Block IM and Chat Messages Lastly, parental filtering software must able to block instant messenger or chat rooms that parent do not want their children to use or access.

Internet filter program should be used along with monitoring software, or better still have a true parental control software with internet and filtering capability. Depending upon the age of your child and your circumstances internet filter may be sufficient. If you have a child or children who have just started using internet, and does not posses enough information to bypass or disable the internet filtering program then internet filtering program is sufficient. Here is the guide on what feature to look for while buying parental control software.

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