Parents Need to Protect Their Children

It’s up to parents to protect their children from pornographic content on the Internet, the digital child predator.  The good news is that safeguards are available, but effort and attention on your part are required.  The protection process can be broken up into the following three-steps:

• Communicate with Your Children:  Discuss the dangers and undesirability of adult content with your children and closely monitor their online activity.  Parents also need to be comfortable that there is good supervision at the houses of  their childrens’ friends. 

• Parental Control Software:  But talking to your children is not enough.  Children, particularly adolescents, are naturally curious and could accidentally access adult content, through a pop-up ad or a misdirected search.  It is essential, for their protection, to set up parental control software (content blockers) on all the devices accessible by your children.  Both Windows/Android and Apple devices will be discussed. 
• Reinforce the Parental Control Software:  All of the content blockers that I have worked with have large gaps in them and need to be reinforced or bootstrapped.

Parental Control:  Windows/Android Devices 

A recent article in PC Magazine listed the best parental control software for 2018. (8) The article  included the software listed below.  Most have a one time charge which is listed, with the exception Covenant Eyes, which has a monthly fee.

1 Qustodio (www.qustodio.com):  $49.95

2) Net Nanny (www.netnanny.com):  $39.99

3)  Kaspersky Safe  Kids Review (www.kapersky.com): $14.99

4) Symantec Norton Family Premier Review (www.symantec.com) : $49.99.

5) Covenant Eyes (www.covenanteyes.com) : $15.99 per month

Unfortunately, content filters do have their limitations. While the software will block  the pornographic websites themselves or urls (the address on the world wide web) , it may not  block images and/or videos accessed from those sites.  Most search engines contain the following options:

• All :  which accesses the website itself (url), and includes the images, videos, news.  This search would generally be blocked by a content filter.
• Videos : this search is restricted to video content and may not be blocked by a content filter.  The videos can be accessed directly by the search engine, without going through the blocked url.  So even though the adult website itself may be blocked by the content filter, pornographic videos may still be accessed by the search engine. Sometimes the videos themselves may be obscured by a safe search feature. But just one quick click on a popup button will disable the safe search feature and allow direct access to the videos, even with a content blocker installed.
• Images :  same as videos above. 

            That is why it is important to bootstrap or reinforce the content filter by also restricting access by certain search engines on your devices.   

Parental Control Software – Apple Devices

The Apple devices are actually equipped with their own parental control features and pornographic content is easier to block than the windows devices.  The Apple devices include Macs, iPads and IPhones.

For a more detailed and comprenensive discussion of content blocking, see button below to access your free publication below: