How to stop your kids from finding offensive material on the Web

The Web is like most bookstores or libraries, it is full of material that is not suitable for children. Well, there is actually content out there that is not suitable for anyone. However, both parents, politicians and experts disagree strongly on what is harmful and what is not. Educational ideologies and religious and ethical standpoints also vary.

The fact is that as soon as you allow a child to surf the Web on their own, there is no way you can safely stop them from accessing offensive material.

To give an example: The Pandia directory is based on the Open Directory, a catalog edited by volunteers from all over the world. We have taken out the adult category. Still, there may be other non-pornographic Web sites that the ODP editors find useful and informative, but that you may find offensive. Moreover, if you use the Pandia Metasearch engine, there are no filters to sort out offensive terms. We do not like pornography, but nor do we like censorship.

It is certainly true that other search engines have such filters (like Google and AllTheWeb), but if you can turn them off, your child can do so also.

This is why we recommend that grown ups accompany children when they are surfing and teach them what to avoid, in the same way as you would tell them to stay away form certain parts of town.

Checking the surfing habits of your children

If you read the browser help files, you will find that there are ways to map what sites the users of this particular PC have visited during a certain period.

You may for instance check the browsers "History" file. In the Internet Explorer you may select Window/History (or hit CTRL+H on a PC or Command+H on a Mac) to see a list of recently visited Web pages.

Alternatively you may open the browser's cache-file to see recently downloaded pictures and pages. To find the folder/directory that contains these files, select Edit/Preferences/Advanced in the Explorer menu (this may vary from version to version and browser type to browser type). Select File/Open file in the browser to look at these files.

If you do use these methods to find out where your child has been, please tell him or her that you are going to do so. You won't gain their trust by spying on them in secret.

Censorware

You may also use Net Nanny and other censorware content filters to sort out certain types of Web sites. Please note though that none of them are foolproof, and that some of them may ban sites your kid should be allowed to see.

Tits and hooters are birds -- really! -- although some of the software may actually ban this page because it contains these words!

Click here to go to the Pandia all in one search engine page for kids and teens!