Tips on Family Safe Searching

In this section we will discuss what is probably the most important part of surfing the Internet. That is keeping you and your family safe. Learning these concepts will help you to navigate away from the hazards on the net.

• Open Door Policy.

  • Wherever there is a computer in use in your house the door needs to be open. That goes for you or your kids. Be an example.

   

• Teach Your Family.

  • Take the time to teach your family the landmines on the Internet. Everyone in your family needs to learn that the Internet is a wonderful place but some caution needs to be taken.

  • If someone in your family comes across an objectionable site, they should leave the site and tell you about it ASAP.

  • Be sure to oversee email and chat rooms. Use online when controls when possible to limit the people that can contact your kids. Also talk to your kids about who they can talk to online and to never give out person information.

   

• Check out the URL and not just the title.

  • Be sure to look at the URL attached to web page title on a web search list. The bold title can be misleading.

  • It saves money for the site owner to have a extension to a site as a home page for a second site. So be careful if the home page URL has an extension.

  • An example would be a title of "Great Toys at Low Prices" but the URL may be www.nudeweb.com/toys.html

   

• Use Filtered Internet Searches or Services.

  • Do not go it alone! That is why we have this page to help you and your family to surf safely.

  • Take the time to check the activity logs. Filtered services offer a log of every site your family goes on. Sometimes the filter will be tricked but you will see the site by reading the log. Some even let you see what word each person in your family typed in. These logs will let you know what your family is really doing on the PC.

  • If you are using Internet Explorer you should consider switching to a safer as well as faster browser. We recommend Firefox because it includes a compressive set of privacy tools and automatically prevents malicious spyware. Please note that you can keep Internet Explorer on your system as you try Firefox or run both as you see fit.

  • The Porn peddlers are too tricky to try to do it alone. You can bookmark our home page or make True Surf your homepage.

  • Making True Surf your home page is a good idea but we also know your kids can navigate around it. So, we have provided a list of some filtering software you may want to search for:

     

    • Norton Internet Security by Symantec

    • Privacy Service by McAfee

    • Solid Oak by CyberSitter (Search by company name for best results.)

    • Intego by ContentBarrier X (Mac)

    • Anonymizer by Net Nanny

    • SoftForYou by iProtectYou Pro