Protecting Children Online: Suggestions Given by the Federal Bureau of Investigations
A FBI Publication entitled “A Parent’s Guide to Internet Safety” posted on the US Department of Justice’s website, gives parents and guardians strategies for protecting their children from victimization. In the article the FBI suggests the following tactics:
Talk to your child about the danger online.
Spend time with your child when they are online. Sit next to them and monitor the process.
Use parental controls to block out certain sites, message boards, and chat rooms.
Maintain access to your child’s online account.
Teach your child responsible use of resources online.
Find out what computer safeguards are used by your child’s school, library, and homes of your child’s friends.
Should abuse happen and your child was a willing participant of sexual exploitation, stress to her or him that the fault was with the offender only.
Your child should never post pictures of themselves online or send pictures to people that they don’t know.
Names, addresses, school names, and telephone numbers should never be given.
Warn your child to never download pictures from an unknown source. The pictures could be sexually explicit in nature.
Children should never respond to board postings that are suggestive, obscene, belligerent or harassing.
Children should be reminded that whatever they are told online may or may not be true.