IM
/ Chat Safety
All
teenagers think they 'know best' and most give out
information
online that they shouldn't.
- When your
child keys a word that appears on your 'snapshot' trigger
list, you can opt to send a warning message
(WARNING - THIS CONVERSATION IS BEING RECORDED) instead of what the
child has just typed. We suggest you include your street
name, school name, telephone number etc. This will doubtless annoy
their
friends, but will surely make an internet predator think twice about
continuing their grooming. Note that setting 'Stealth Mode'
will disable this feature.
- Remember: Web-based
chat rooms
can be
treated just like Instant Messengers, courtesy of our web site
categorisation.
- Our
Smart SnapShot facility tells
you much more than a key logger would
- see the emoticons, pictures being received, and (usually) web-cam
images.
- If you prefer to use personal supervision, you can
restrict browser,
email, or IM (chat) activities to specified times when you are around
to keep an eye on them.
Safety
during
Web Browsing
- By
logging web page titles and using Smart SnapShots, you can
see
what they have been
looking at, and discuss it with them later. They will soon self-censor!
You can configure our smart screen capture to snap every web page
they spend more than n (you set the value) seconds looking at.
Once again, you can set it to only record those pages they
spend
significant time on, not just 'surfing through'.
- If
they use sites that let them create content (e.g. Piczo ), you may well
want to activate the keyword - triggered snapshot + deletion mechanism
to stop them putting personally identifiable information on their web
site / blog.
- You
can set up PIC-PC to give
some level of control over sites viewed, although this is not its
primary function: You
can ban web pages with keywords (you define, depending on
what
kind of content you wish to avoid) in the title, or set it
up so they can always use web sites with certain (you define) keywords
in
the title. For example, allow anything with 'BBC' in title,
limit and/or snapshot
anything else. Because web site owners want to be found, and
search engines put emphasis on keywords in page titles, this can be a
very effective method of filtering.
Why not use dedicated web site
blocker software?
- Try
Googling for ''Bypass x"
where x
is your proposed site blocking software. Your kids - or one
of their friends - will do the same search!
- If
they can't bypass it, they
will go to a friend's house to look, and you'll never know what they've
been viewing!
- Blockers
/ filters often get it
wrong.
According to 'New Scientist' magazine, Richard Dawkins' web site
(www.richarddawkins.net) was banned by one well known blocker/filter as
being an 'occult' site, and classified by another as being 'religious'!
- My
Personal Opinion:- Better
to know
what they are looking at, and discuss it with them, than drive them to
use other peoples' PCs that are out of your control!
What
about content filtering?
Content
filtering is never
100% effective. It misses text displayed as images, and either misses
deliberately misspelled words or is over-zealous about it, blocking
perfectly innocent pages. Plenty of sites advise how to bypass software
of this type.
For younger children, filters and blockers do have their
place.
Remember:-
No
software (PIC-PC included) can guarantee your
child's safety on-line. No software is bug-free, no software is
foolproof. The only way to be 100% safe is to stand over
their shoulder. If you can't do that, we aim to make
our software the next best thing.
Our Philosophy
Only you,
the parent, should be deciding what your kids can and can't do on the
computer - not someone in Seattle. In the real world, you
don't lock your kids in the house to keep them safe. You just make sure
you know where they go, who they talk to. If they want to do
stuff you don't like, keep them
close and monitor things - being too restrictive will just drive them
away to places you have no control over. And yes, sometimes you peek
round the
curtains. The on-line world is just the same.
We
aim to provide you with the most sophisticated tool
we can to achieve that goal.
