Internet and Computer Safety Tips (March 18 2007)
Ways to keep your children and teens safer when using social networking sites:
● Discuss the dangers and future repercussions with your child.
● Enter into a safe-computing contract with your child about his or her use of these sites and computer use in general.
● Enable computer Internet filtering features if they are available from your Internet service.
● Install monitoring software or keystroke capture devices on your family computer that will help monitor your child's Internet activity.
● Know each of your child's passwords, screen names and all account information.
● Put the computer in a family area of the household and do not permit private usage.
● Monitor what your child's friends are posting regarding your child's identity. Often children and their friends have accounts linked to one another, so it's not just your child's profile and information you need to worry about.
● Know what other access your child has to computers and devices such as cell phones and personal data assistants or PDAs.
● Report all inappropriate non-criminal behaviour to the site through their reporting procedures.
● Report criminal behaviour to the appropriate law-enforcement agency including the cyber tip line at www.cybertipline.ca
Ways for children and teens to stay safer when using social networking sites:
● Never post your personal information, such as cell phone number, address, or the name of your school.
● Be aware information you give out in blogs could also put you at risk of victimization. People looking to harm you could use the information you post to gain your trust.
● Never give out your password to anyone other than your parent or guardian.
● Only add people as friends to your site if you know them in real life.
● Never meet in personwith anyone you first "met" on a social networking site. Some people may not be who they say they are.
● Remember posting information about your friends could put them at risk. Protect your friends by not posting any names, ages, phone numbers, school names, or locations.
