The summer holidays are in full swing and the British weather is typically changeable. Many children are therefore indoors and spending time surfing the Internet, which is unfortunately often the haunt of cyber bullies and paedophiles looking to groom children through chatrooms or social networking websites. It is little wonder that many parents are concerned about their children’s online safety and welfare.
Parents face the problem of it being impractical to constantly oversee their children’s online activities. And potentially damaging online material can take many guises, including websites, chat rooms where grooming can take place, blogs, bullying emails sent by other schoolchildren, and even videos of children fighting or children being bullied by others taken on their mobile phones – so called happy slapping – and then posted on the Internet.
XGate has the potential to significantly reduce any harmful online communication, without parents having to permanently pry at their children’s activity.
The XGate monitors real time children’s online activity and alerts parents if relevant by email or sms on their mobile phone to inappropriate material and/or behaviour in terms of website content, chat room activity and emails and their attachments. This should be especially welcome in the light of a recent children’s charity survey which uncovered that children who were subjected to cyber bullying did not inform their parents because they thought their mobiles may be confiscated or PCs be off limits.
The XGate will:
- flash an alert page (which reads ‘This page has been blocked under the category of pornography, please contact your guardian’) on the PC screen should a user try to access a website with pornographic content; the page will stay on the screen until the child decides to navigate away from the site
- email or sms the website address to parents’ mobile phones to advise them so they can discuss with their children later
- block emails with pornographic or bullying content and attachments via its intelligent email filter
- email or sms to parents’ mobile phones if inappropriate or ‘trigger’ language occurs while their children are in chat rooms and at risk of being groomed; grooming language includes phrases such as ’sex’, ’secret’, ‘meet’, ‘mobile phone number’, ‘age’, ‘webcam’, ‘are you alone’ etc
- allow the parent to remotely control their child’s computer by using simple replies to any email or sms alerts they receive, including the ability to remotely shutdown the child’s computer
- control access to specific websites at pre-agreed times to children, e.g. education websites only between 18:00 and 20:00 for support with school assignments.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/pressrelease/protect-children-from-online-threats-during-summer-holidays/1093/
