Worried about your kid’s internet usage? These 11 internet safety rules for parents of young kids will help them avoid the dangers of the internet and protect your child online.
If you’re a parent who has young kids, you’ve definitely asked the question, “How to protect my child on the internet?” when searching for online safety tips.
As any parent knows, it’s important to learn online safety for kids to learn how to be safe on the internet, and how to keep your kids safe online.
Young children don’t know any cyber safety tips and are just not aware of just how unsafe the internet can be for them. It’s up to us parents to learn internet safety for kids and how to make a computer child safe.
There are many risks to children using the internet. Your kids may unknowingly click on malicious adware, adult sites, or Bitcoin mining sites, leading to a security threat.
It’s not their mistake as little kids can’t be expected to understand such matters, so it’s your job to understand what is e-safety for kids.
The Internet appears to be rather a source of entertainment for them – a place to play games and learn new things – and a source of danger.
Online threats include threats such as malware that can affect the internet browsing and performance of the computer, which can even result in theft of login credentials.
It’s not enough to know some general online and mobile security tips to prevent data theft and protect your privacy. You should also follow certain internet safety rules for kids if you want to keep your kids safe online.
In this article, we will share some cybersafety information and methods of protecting children from online threats using online tools you can install on your devices.
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11 Online Safety And Cyber Safety Rules For Kids
If you’re a parent of a young child, you’ll want to know these internet safety rules for parents of young kids to protect your child online.
1. Block dangerous sites
You can block websites that are not suitable or full of malware from your home network. To do so, you need to go to the router setup page and block the sites. This can be beneficial for all family members.
If you do not want your child to browse sites where viruses can easily enter your computer, such as pirated software sites, free movie sites, and so on, you can easily block them.
2. Enable the parental control function
Using the parental control feature that comes with all the popular antivirus software like TotalAV, Norton, McAfee and so on, you can easily limit access to the Internet and programs on the computer.
To ensure safe surfing for kids you can also block untrusted sites using the feature without accessing the router, but this will work only for the device where an antivirus program is installed.
The browsing activity of children can be protected by enabling the feature so these tools can double up as parental control software.
3. Configure your devices for automatic backup
If ransomware attacks the computer after your child browses the Internet, it can be difficult to bring your computer back to its normal state.
If you have a backup of the system and programs stored in the computer, you can quickly restore the whole system and applications from it.
So, prioritize the automatic backup as a method of recovering your system and data after online attacks.
4. Never let your children shop online
Yes, you should never let your kids buy anything using your credit card. It is even better if you don’t share your credit card information with small children.
They may innocently provide the details of your credit card to unsafe sites without understanding what they’re doing, resulting in a substantial economic loss for you.
5. Avoid using social logins
Your child may sign up to a new site using social logins like Gmail, Facebook, and so on, which allow signing up in few clicks.
Some of these sites may ask for permissions to access all the emails, contacts, and so on. From the security point of view, this is very dangerous and must be avoided.
Social networks get hacked and their user data gets stolen by hackers all the time. One of your efforts to create internet safety for children should be to make your children aware of the dangers of using social logins.
As far as possible, I create a new login using email and password instead of using social logins as I understand the dangers.
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6. Avoid public WiFi
When travelling or in an airport, your child may be tempted to log in to the free public WIfi. Your devices could be vulnerable to online threats from public WiFi as well.
Hackers can use a man-in-the-middle attack to steal all your sensitive data. So, help your kids understand the dangers and teach them not to use public WiFi without protecting their connection.
Help them understand why they should always use a VPN for safe internet access and to hide their information while using any public network.
7. Install content filtering software
Software like Net Natty has the feature of blocking insecure content online and can be used to create a kid-safe computer. You can also quickly inspect what your kids are up to online with this tool.
When you install content filtering software, your kids will not be able to open unsafe sites leading to violent and illegal stuff. So, using these tools can be great for protecting children against online threats.
8. Teach your child to think before clicking on a link
Children love playing games online even when they don’t have money to buy upgrades and other paid benefits.
They will try to fulfil all the requirements to get game resources and end up searching for free online generators, which are an online threat as they generate malware and cookie spies.
Also, they could become a victim of phishing attacks. As a responsible parent, it’s your job to teach your child online gaming safety tips for playing and staying safe online.
Teach your child how to differential safe and unsafe sites by avoiding non-SSL encrypted websites and always checking the site URL before logging in.
Show them why they should not open or click on any link before checking it out and how that content might affect them and you adversely.
9. Update your antivirus and run frequent scans
You never know when a virus might attack your computer. For that reason, it’s better if children know how to use antivirus software to protect their computer and their own devices.
Parents can enable the auto-updating feature of the antivirus software and schedule scanning so that the program will do its job automatically.
10. Prioritize the use of HTTPS
HTTPS plays a vital role in protecting your computer against online attacks. If someone is trying to gain access to online browsing, they will try to disable the SSL of all the sites.
There is a chrome extension called HTTPS everywhere which redirects any site to its HTTPS version if available. You install it as an additional way to create a child-safe internet browser.
Even if the hacker disables the HTTPS version, the plugin will redirect the site to the original one with SSL enabled.
11. Install a professional antivirus software
Professional antivirus software can be one of the best ways to protect children from online threats. While there are many excellent antivirus programs for Windows PCs, choosing the best antivirus program for a Mac device can also be challenging.
Total AV, Norton, and McAfee are considered to be the best-paid antivirus programs and we recommend you go for Total AV as it comes with plenty of handy features that offer protection against adware, malware, and spyware, as well as a parental control option.
Whatever antivirus you buy, you need to look for well-implemented features of parental control, adware, and spyware blocking. Bitdefender is also one of the best Mac antivirus tools, but it has fewer features than other antivirus programs supported above.
These are some of the cyber-safety rules and safety tips for kids that you need to teach your kids to help them avoid the dangers of the internet. The most effective internet safety tips would be to use parental control features and not allow kids to do online shopping on their own.
Overuse of technology is also not good, and you should limit the time your children are using the Internet. Never limit them to using the Internet only for entertainment and playing games, but introduce them to interesting educational sites so they know the internet is also a place to learn new things.
I hope you liked this internet safety article on cyber-safety for kids and how to protect your children from online threats with the best tools for online protection.
If you liked this article on cybersecurity for kids, share it with others and leave your own tips on internet safety tips for kids in the comment section below.
About the author:
Priya Florence Shah is the Group Editor at SHEROES and author of Devi2Diva, an emotional self-care book for women.
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