Train your child to be “cyber smart” so that they can recognise potential dangers and know how to avoid threatening situations. Talk to your children about sexual victimisation and the use of the Internet, especially chat rooms, by paedophiles and child molesters looking for child victims. Encourage your children to tell you if they receive messages which make them feel uncomfortable or threatened, especially messages of a sexual nature.

Remember that your child might have access to the Internet outside your home, such as in a school or library or a friend’s home or even the mobile cellular phone. The more your children know and understand about being “cyber smart”, the safer their exploration of the Internet. Your supervision of your children’s daily lives to ensure their safety in the real off-line world must apply equally to their lives in the on-line “cyber world”.

Spend time with your children when they are on-line and ask them to tell you about what they are doing and what they enjoy about the Internet. Show interest in their Internet activities. And if your child has ever been involved in any form of on-line sexual exploitation, even if willingly, make sure she/he understands that it is not her/his fault and that she/he is the a victim of unscrupulous abusers of the Internet.

Make sure your child’s computer is in a room used by the family and not in the child’s bedroom. Internet predators would not be so keen to attempt to groom your child if they know that the computer screen is visible to every person in the household.

Install filtering software in computers used by your children. Filtering software can be programmed to block access to web sites that contain materials to which children should not be exposed. However, you must know that filtering software does not provide a hundred percent guarantee that your child would not stumble across unsuitable materials. It is a useful complement to all the other measures that you would need to take to ensure that your child is safe on the Internet. Filtering software may be downloaded from the Internet. It is useful to talk to your Internet service provider or to someone who knows about filtering and parental control programmes. (You can find a directory of filtering software programmes at www.getnetwise.org/tools. You can get more information about filtering and blocking software at www.pin.org.uk/filtering.)

You can also talk to your Internet service provider about rating systems that rely on web site operators to indicate the nature of the materials on their web sites. Internet browsers can be configured to allow children to visit only web sites that are rated at a level that are suitable for children. However, remember that not all web sites are submitted for rating.

Monitor your child’s use of chat rooms. Make sure you know enough about chat rooms to advise your child about chat rooms which should be avoided. Direct your child to safe chat rooms, especially those which have been created for children. And, most importantly, tell your children to-

* never arrange or agree to any face-to-face meeting with any person they met on-line
* never post to the Internet, or send to people they do not personally know, any pictures of themselves
* never give out any personal information about themselves, even if the information seems unimportant and innocent, to any person on-line
* never download pictures from an unknown source since there could be sexually explicit images
* never respond to messages on-line that are sexually suggestive, obscene, aggressive or harassing
* never believe as true anything that may be said by people on-line, especially about themselves because people on-line are not always who they pretend to be and paedophiles are particularly adept at pretending to be of the same age as your child
* never open e-mail attachments unless they know the person sending them and know what they contain, and
* never enter a private chat room.

Make sure you check your child’s e-mails and that your child knows that you will do so. Assure your child that you will do so not because you do not trust her/him but to ensure that she/he is safe from those who could harm her/ him. Better yet, share an e-mail address with your child so that you can monitor all messages. You should also check your phone bills for unusual amounts and unfamiliar phone numbers.