our teenage children probably love the internet as much as other people their age. As far as they’re concerned, it’s an extension of their life: they can meet friends in chat rooms, exchange views in forums, build communities that they actually identify with on social networking sites and so on. It’s a great way of letting teenagers express themselves, share pictures, videos and the like. And from a parent’s perspective, it may feel safer too. After all, your children are better off hanging around upstairs with online friends than being out in the park, aren’t they? But there are risks on the internet too. Kids will be kids and they are always at risk of meeting rather dubious characters, and being lured into fun but dangerous activities.

Fortunately, by keeping yourself informed about what your teenage children enjoy about the internet, by helping them to explore cyberspace safely, and by making sure that they know to come to you if they feel threatened or encounter any sort of problem online, you can greatly reduce the risks they face. The key, here, is communication with your children! It’s a three-way exchange of information between the web, your children and you.

Here are a few tips to ensure that you remain fully aware of what your children are doing on the internet.

Treat online stores like real stores
Just because it’s an online store doesn’t mean your children should abandon all common sense! There are things they would never do in a real store — like leaving their wallet open on a jeans promotion shelf and then walking away — and they need to recognize when they behave carelessly online. Before submitting credit card numbers or other confidential information over the internet through an apparently secure connection, get them to check that the store’s internet address is authentic (and teach them never to follow a link that someone else has sent them, e.g. in an email, but instead to type the address of their favourite stores into their browser themselves). They should also pay attention to estimated delivery dates. Sites that only offer delivery dates more than 20 days after payment involve more risk.

Installing a good internet security program with parental controls can help you to block inappropriate websites. Better still, you can set it up to filter data leaving your computer in order to prevent your teenage children from divulging personal information without your permission.

Get online gaming under control
Some games are played directly on the web. They require you to turn on ActiveX or JavaScript controls. These are programming languages that let developers to create programs capable of interacting with your web browser to a much greater degree. Although these codes can be very helpful when they are turned on, they can also prove very useful to hackers who want to gain entry to your computer. When your children have finished playing games online, make sure they turn off the ActiveX and JavaScript controls in your browser’s configuration menu (usually requires a check box to be unchecked).

It might be a good idea to set up a separate user account for online gaming, with only a web browser installed on it. When they’ve had enough, your children can switch back to the full account. When playing an online game, it’s more sensible to play it at the game site rather than at any one of the score of amateur websites also hosting it.

Conclusion
Help your teenagers to enjoy everything that the internet has to offer. By taking precautions and teaching them to stop and think before either downloading anything from the internet or divulging too much information, you can protect your identity, private documents, your computer, and most importantly, your children, from security threats. To reduce the risks, make sure your computer has security tools installed like Norton Internet Security and Norton Confidential — these can all help you to have fun and stay safe.

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