Parental Control Software: Monitor your Kids Without Invading their Privacy

For few years there has been some controversy on monitoring kid's internet use. Those that are against monitoring say it is an invasion of kid's privacy and we should trust our children. I totally agree that monitoring can be an invasion of kids' privacy and should be considered very well before turning on parental control software on kids account on the home computer. But since I started to study kid's safe surfing and lecturing on dangers of the internet I have seen that those groups of people who are totally against using monitoring software's are getting smaller.

The Reason? Yes, people are getting more informed on real dangers of the internet. Chris Hanson Dateline "To catch a predator" opened our eyes on how dangerous communication can be online. I just finished Chris Hanson book with the same name and it is a must read for all interested in learning more about dangers of the internet. Terrible stories of predators and their victims in the book. Also the very fact that MySpace has closed account of 30.000 listed predators is also something that made the news in 2007 showing how huge this problem seems to be. Once a also read that it took predator only few second on average to start talking to a FBI decoy pretending to be a teenage girl.

Even though, I think it is important for all parents to avoid misusing the monitoring software's. We should keep children informed we are monitoring their internet use; look at the reports with the children. Try to monitor specific behavior as taking screenshots when they send their telephone number and home address to someone and etc. We should try to avoid looking and reading all things the kids do online and try to look at only those things that seems suspicious.