Here’s something that you probably didn’t know before and I hope that this information helps you keep your children as safe as they deserve to be.

Child Security in Chat Rooms

Chat rooms have long been a favourite pastime on the internet for kids. They can be great fun and the children can make some great new friends online. The problem with chat rooms is that they are generally anonymous, so the person that they are chatting to may not be who they say they are.

Unless you supervise your children whenever they are in a chat room then controlling who they chat too can be a problem, although, there are some general guidelines that your children can follow to make their online chatting safer:

* Stay anonymous, they should use a nickname while online, and never reveal their real name.
* Never tell anyone where they live, not even if they have been chatting to the person for years.
* Never tell anyone what school they go to.
* Never give out phone numbers.
* Never agree to meet someone without a parent present, and ensure the person they are going to meet knows a parent will be accompanying them.
* Tell an adult if anything strange happens or anything is said to them that makes them feel uncomfortable.
* Introduce yourself in the chat room to their online friends, especially if your child wants to meet them.

Although these guidelines may seem fairly obvious, by ensuring that your children follow them they can help remove some of the dangers.

Spam email with explicit images

Spam email is one of the most annoying problems on the internet and with no real solution in sight it will remain a problem for some time to come.

A lot of email providers offer spam protection
, but unfortunately most are not 100% reliable, one of the best defenses against this type of email is by using specialized software (see Spam Shield below) that restricts access to certain types of email, and by restricting any images that may be unsuitable for your child.