Protecting our children against Internet predators

Surfing the Internet Can Be VERY Dangerous!

Unless you live under a rock, and totally ignore radio and TV reports, you have certainly heard stories about teenagers who have been lured away by an older person on the Internet. IRC Chat rooms and IM software leave your kids vulnerable to the seedier side of the Internet, exposing them to sexual predators and perverts. These predators don't necessarily lurk around schools and playgrounds in trench coats.  As a matter of fact, they mostly look like you and I, normal everyday people. They come from all walks of life, white collar workers, blue collar workers, priests and ministers, public officials and (gulp) teachers. In the whole scheme of things it may not be all that likely to happen to you but it is possible. Even if that doesn't happen, chat software in the hands of a teenager, (unmonitored), can expose you to identity theft. You just never know what someone can be talked into when chatting to someone if they have gained your confidence and if you think they're a friend.

There are many,  many Internet sites that are potentially very dangerous for your children to access.  One of the most popular sites that comes to mind and has been in the news a lot lately is http://www.myspace.com  This is the first stop for many Internet predators in their pursuit of a youngster to befriend and take "under their wing."  The participants on this site often share their most personal and intimate details, including pictures, address and phone numbers!

Your first line of attack should be a good hardware firewall appliance that has content controls and port blocking functionality built-in. These can be purchased for under $100 and are worth every penny. And in case you are worried that you will be restricted, those firewalls can exclude your system from the content controls while still providing you with the protection of the firewall.

The second line of attack involves creating limited-user login accounts for your kids.  This will assist in preventing installation of software that you prohibit and make your system less susceptible to viruses, worms, Trojans and spyware.  Many of these malware programs need to write information to the registry and system.  Having limited-user accounts setup block a lot of these activities.

The third  line of attack to protect your youngsters is to install good filtering and possibly Internet monitoring software to prevent and monitor access to services that you select as acceptable.

Here is a list of programs that should never be on computers that children regularly use.

• File sharing  software: Much of the software found on Peer-2-Peer systems is infected with something you really don't want on your system. Nothing should be downloaded from a site that isn't a respected and trusted site. Some of these programs to be wary of are:

1. LimeWire

2. Gnutella

3. Kazaa

4. Sharezilla

5. BearShare

• Internet Explorer  STOP USING IT TODAY! Hide the Internet Explorer icons and shortcuts so nobody uses it! The result will be a dramatic reduction in problems including slowdowns in the system caused by drive-by download malware. Use either Firefox or Opera for web surfing.

• Instant Messaging (IM) software:  Some of the worst worms on the Internet have been designed to latch onto Instant Messaging streams. IM software is very  insecure. If you can't stop using it at least make sure you take the time to keep it up-to-date. Some of that software is constantly being updated, not as much for the additional features they tout but for the security holes they plugged.