With children getting savvier with Internet and more to the point of hiding their activities, parents can outsmart them using simple software tools that dramatically reduce security risks.
Pointing out that direct monitoring may be of considerably less use as children today are smart enough to manage the user details and hide some activities, internet security firm Trend Micro’s country manager, Mr Amit Nath, advocates installing parental control software.
“With an effective internet security system encompassing parental controls, behavioural monitoring, and rootkit detection and removal, parents can successfully monitor children’s activity online,” he says.
Highlighting the grave risk that children are exposed to when using the internet, a recent survey in ten Indian cities by global security tech firm McAfee had revealed that 62 per cent of affluent children share personal information online.
“The various risks associated with kids’ internet usage include inadvertent exposure to inappropriate images or content, solicitation by sexual predators in chat rooms and by email, cyber-bullying, cyber stalking, digital piracy, etc,” says Mr Rohit Chaudhary, the founder and CEO of eTechies.in.
Agreeing that no parent can monitor children’s online activity real time, especially when parents are either busy working or are not that tech savvy, he says that software available in the market can send a complete transcript of all the sites which have been visited on a particular computer and also block them accordingly.