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| Safe Surfing
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The Internet is a rapidly growing medium, and as is true elsewhere in our society, the online community is dealing with a number of challenging issues. Working together, we can make the online environment a safe and rewarding experience for everyone, especially our children.
To help encourage "safe surfing" for our children, Yahoo! has taken measures to ensure the safety and privacy of our young users when they are online. And, because we take these issues very seriously, Yahoo! is committed to introducing new technologies and devoting additional resources to limit objectionable content on our communications services.
There are also important steps parents can take to monitor and promote the safety of their children's online activities.
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| Yahoo! Safety Information
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There are important steps that parents can take to monitor and promote the safety of their children's online activities. Yahoo! offers a number of different sites where parents can go to learn how to make sure their children are surfing safely. Here are some of the resources you can find at Yahoo!.
Yahooligans!
Promoting responsible Internet usage and online child safety has historically been a priority for Yahoo!. In 1996, Yahoo! was the first Internet company to launch a child and teacher-friendly Web resource - called Yahooligans! (http://www.yahooligans.com) - that includes safe, child-appropriate Web sites for children aged 7 to 12.
Parents' Guide
To promote Web safety, Yahooligans! offers myriad instructional and educational resources for children and parents at http://www.yahooligans.com/parents. In addition to safety tips for young users, Yahooligans! provides a family pledge for online safety; a guide for dealing with inappropriate Web content; a child-friendly description of how to read a privacy policy; and, safety quizzes for children and families. Yahooligans! also provides links to filtering software to help further protect children.
Safe Surfing Checklist
In order to keep children safe, Yahooligans! has created a safe surfing checklist for parents, which can be found at http://www.yahooligans.com/parents/checklist.html. Some of the items in the checklist are talked about in more detail below.
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| Recommendations for Parents
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- Make it Easy to Monitor Your Child's Activities
Place your family computer in the most public area of your home - the living room, kitchen, or wherever it's easiest for you to monitor their computer use and activities.
- Take Advantage of Filtering Tools
Filtering software like CyberPatrol, NetNanny, and SurfWatch can help keep children from inappropriate online areas. Many families find that adding blocking and filtering programs to their regular supervision gives them additional peace of mind. However, nothing is foolproof; new sites are created all the time that may not be caught by the programs. Having a filter program is not a substitute for supervising your child's online activities.
- Create a Family Pledge for Online Safety
Discuss how much time your children should be spending online and decide on restrictions or guidelines on the physical location where the kids can go online. Talk about which kinds of web sites are okay, and which ones are off-limits and the type of information children can give out about themselves. Yahoo! has a sample family pledge at http://www.yahooligans.com/parents/familypledge.html.
- Chat Rooms
Explore a few chat rooms together while discussing your guidelines. What is your comfort level with this method of communication? Do you want your children to chat in monitored chat rooms only? Are your children allowed to send personal messages to people they've only met online?
Kids should never respond online when they feel uncomfortable or scared by something they've seen or read. If they have any doubts, they should find an adult immediately and show them the inappropriate material.
Click here for more information on safe chatting.
- Giving Out Personal Information
Talk to your children about what kind of information is appropriate to give. They should understand that they should never give out personal information, such as their full name, address, phone number, school, or picture, to anyone they meet online without consulting with their parents first.
- Meeting online friends
Children should never arrange to meet an online friend in person without an adult present.
- Do Your Homework
There are several websites Yahoo! recommends to help parents learn more about online safety for their children. Check out the links to the left under Related Sites.
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