When Apple decides to add parental controls to its hugely popular mobile phone, iPhone, you know software to control kids? digital behaviour is moving primetime.
And as age controls catch attention, they seem to be changing shape. With social features dominating the Web landscape, parental control software is promising to track kids? interactions online.
The new parental control software like the Onlinefamily.Norton from Symantec not just blocks objectionable websites but helps supervise chats and watch social networks use. ?The traditional parental control software lets parents create a list of approved websites and block all others. With social networking dominating the Web, monitoring software needs to watch communications rather than just the sites visited,? says Symantec Asia Pacific and Japan, vice-president (consumer), David Freer.
Using this online tool, parents can view search words and phrases that a child searches on sites like Google, YouTube and Wikipedia. This will tell parents what their kids are interested in. It also monitors their activity on social networks like Facebook and MySpace with the ability to see how kids represent themselves. This online tool, like most other parental control software, can be customised according to the age group and kids needs. Settings in this free Web-based product are stored in the cloud, making remote configuration and reporting simple.
Broadly, kids age control software allows parents to create a list of approved websites and block others or record all the data that?s sent, received, loaded and viewed. Some of them offer to send alerts when kids go to sites with banned keywords. Besides, website blocking and monitoring, these tools can help parents set limits on how long a time can kids spend on the computer. Prominent packages include NetNanny from ContentWatch, CyberPatrol, SafeEyes and BSafe.
Besides visits to social networking sites, parents are worried about online chats. With Onlinefamily, chatting with any friend can be blocked until parents have approved it and can initiate the chat with a new friend only when parents approve. Alternatively, parents can allow kids to chat but ask to get notification of any chat with a new friend and get the conversation recorded. Some other software like Bsafe Online allows parents? control over a child?s chat.
With the Internet population getting younger and younger and publicised examples of risky online behaviour like sexting to cyberbullying, online safety is going higher on parents? priorities. 91% of parents in India see it as their responsibility to keep their kids safe online, according to the latest Norton Online Living Report. The same report ranks India highest globally (63%) in terms of the number of parents who feel it is difficult for them to make rules about the Internet because it wasn?t around when they were younger.
Studies have shown that the largest proportion of parents is worried about their child seeing sexually or violently explicit images on the Internet. According to a recent study by Gallup Organisation in Europe, about two-third of parents are worried about their child?s online exposure to explicit images. While 45% were very worried, 20% were rather worried.
Clearly, website blocking is among the top priorities for parents. ?It?s important to involve children in the process of setting up rules for online behaviour,? says David Freer. His company?s new web-based tool, OnlineFamily, for one, encourages child?s participation. Whenever a site is blocked, the child gets warning and an explanatory note and the child can request parental permission to visit the site.
While it might help a worried parent get rid of a headache or two by snooping on their kids, it raises several privacy issues. While Symantec?s OnilneFamily tries to involve the child in the process, some products like NetNanny try to balance by recording conversations only when they sound dangerous.
Like majority of other monitoring software, none of the parental control software is bullet proof and smart kids could bypass almost all of them by using a secure anonymising proxy website.