Parental control programs are a good way for you to monitor your child’s online activities and keep them safe when they use the internet. These monitoring programs for parents can help to both protect your children from online sex predators and prevent them from viewing inappropriate websites. The good news is that there is free parental control software available to you.
If your family uses Internet Explorer to surf the web, enabling the free parental controls is easy. There is a Content Advisor section in Internet Explorer. Simply go to the “tools” menu and then choose “internet options”. From there, you can click on the tab labeled “content” and then click on the “enable” option. If the content filter is not working, you can download a free one from the internet. IRCAPlus and Safe Surf are two good free content filters, which you may use.
If you feel that you need more ways to protect your children as they surf the web, there are many more free parental control and monitoring options to choose from. A lot depends on the age of your child and what sorts of websites they tend to frequent.
For instance, if you have a young child who is just starting out, you may consider using Kid Rocket or Toddler’s Browser. They are two programs which incorporate free parental controls and are geared toward young children. On the other hand, you may have children in grade school. If that is the case, you may want to use a program such as WeBlocker, which has filters that use blacklists. If you have a teenager, these programs may not be useful to you. Most teenagers are smart enough to know how to disable such software. You may, instead, need to resort to buying programs such as WebWatcher, Spector Pro, Net Nanny or other monitoring and filter software. These type of programs can range from $20 to $100 or so, depending on the features. Protecting your teenager from inappropriate online content is worth it though.