What do the relevant parents/caregivers here do in regards to net security around their children?

I've never bothered before but my son is now entering the weird years (he's recently turned twelve) and I want to cut out some of the more gratuitous of the porn out there that just shows up while surfing. What do you guys recommend?

Depends on what you want to block, if it is just adverts on websites that use what amounts to porn to sell their products Adblock+ is your best bet. If it is full blown websites I think you will need to use some form of Net Nanny program to block them, but make sure you fully understand how it works and research ways around it because your son sure will.

Perhaps just having a chat with him and making sure the PC is in a public room is the best bet.

DarthHelmet86 wrote:Perhaps just having a chat with him and making sure the PC is in a public room is the best bet.

This is the best advice I can think of too. They'll find a way to view porn if they want to, so we've started talking about it with our ten year old. TBH, this was prompted by the misogynistic ads presented on some of the kids video game sites such as Ninjakiwi.

Have a family PC in the kitchen?

We used Norton Family for the last few years and it's been excellent. It can be tailored to different age groups and then further refined to allow or disallow genres or specific sites within those. Our biggest concern wasn't porn, although we did keep that locked out. It was social media and chatrooms, both of which Norton can control access to. If you are also the type of parent that wants to monitor your child's activity and control the hours they can spend online it can do that. We have other ways of dealing wit those issues go we don't use those features.

Am I naive to think that unrestricted access and teaching your children what to expect and explain that certain images, videos will pop up even though I have stopped all pop ups is a bad approach?

talkietoaster wrote:Am I naive to think that unrestricted access and teaching your children what to expect and explain that certain images, videos will pop up even though I have stopped all pop ups is a bad approach?

No it's not a bad approach. I have done the same with my older children. However as with all things to do with child-rearing, it has to be age appropriate. I would not have taken this approach when they were 7 years old. My youngest is now 11 and we are much more relaxed about her internet use now, although we still control access to chatrooms and social media. One of her 11 year old friends has already used Instagram to put quite sexually provocative pictures of herself online. I'm confident that my daughter would not do that but children are intensely curious and I'd rather she didn't have the opportunity to prove me wrong just yet.

The subtitle is interesting .. protecting kids .. which seems to be mantra of quite a few businesses, educators and parents I am not totally convinced of in the context of the topic. As for now I am with talkietoaster, taking care of 5 and 7 year old, but am prepared to be educated. Bookmarking.

They're curious, their friends will tell them about dodgy images, and if you forbid it, they'll go to their friends' houses to look at it.

There was some talk on Sky News this morning about how little teenagers know about the real facts of life. The woman they were interviewing said they are taught the technicalities in sex ed classes and what contraception and HIV prevention is, but that's about it. They don't get taught about how to conduct relationships, or how to deal with bullying, especially online, and how to avoid themselves getting hurt.

My feeling is, it's best to do that yourself. Keep the computer in a public area in the house, and when you have access to it, look at browsing history, and talk to them. Mostly, tell them to not post images of themselves online because there are people out there who will take their photos and use them. Someone I know told of how someone he knew warned him that he'd found pics of his daughter online, her face been photoshopped onto a nude image, making it look like she'd posed for it. The person who told me this said that he won't allow even one photo of his own kids online. Not until they're old enough to understand how your photos can be made public. (I've since removed as many pics of me as I can find. Not that I think someone will do that with my pic, but I want to control who will see them).

I also watch a few Crime & Investigation shows during the day. Sometimes they talk about youngsters being stalked and identified simply from photos they've posted on a Facebook page. Tell them to not add personal information to any social networking sites. If the predators don't know where you live, and can't find your phone number, they can't stalk you. Also use yahoo, or gmail email accounts. Don't every use your ISP email account for social networking sites. Those providers have really good spam filters so you can avoid lurkers finding you. My personal website email account has just been changed to a gmail account because the providers of my website service were getting their servers bogged down with spam bots and dodgy people accessing them. So get your kids a gmail account and tell them to use only that to sign on to social sites.

It might be a little harsh to warn them about real predators that pose as Facebook friends and then turn out to be porn scouts and even sociopaths, but rather they're a little afraid than dead.

As for watching porn, mostly if they're using Google to search for porn, Google is governed by laws that prevent them from accessing the really horrible sites, mostly only hackers can find those sites, otherwise what they'll find is perhaps dodgy for kids, but be realistic. Rather discuss it with them, tell they why it's distasteful for children to be looking at that stuff, and allow them to feel free to talk to you about it, whatever it is.

Using ADBlock is a good idea. I have an adblocker installed on Facebook so that I don't see any advertising there as well. Make sure it's activated for your kids, but always keep the door for discussion open.

When they're attending sex ed classes at school, ask about them, discuss what they've learnt with them. This woman who was in her 20s said she was 13 when she met a boy who was 18 at school. Because she was naive and thought that he was being caring, and despite her own parents' loving long-standing relationship, she gave in and when he abused her, sexually as well, she didn't know she was being abused. She didn't interpret that her feelings of disgust after every encounter with him wasn't the way she was supposed to feel. She just thought sex was disgusting but did it anyway. She said it was because her sex ed classes didn't tell her what was supposed to feel good and what was abuse.