At a minimum, you should make sure your children are using Google SafeSearch when they are online – whether your child is using a laptop, tablet or mobile device. Safe Search filtering can be accessed from the top of our website. This means that the search results are filtered such that no results would appear related to inappropriate content.

That said – Safe Search only filters results. It does not block access to the rest of the internet where potentially harmful content awaits, nor can offer parental controls such as restricting usage.

What Every Parent Should be Using – Parental Control Software

Even with the most strict guidelines in place, it is nearly impossible to monitor your children’s activity online doing it manually. In the past several years, a new niche of software has been developed to help families monitor overall online and computer activity.

Parental Control Software is a must. FREE Trial!

While there are several in this field, what they all have in common is that the specific monitoring is automated.

This does not mean that you can rely on the system 100% of the time to monitor what your kids are doing – parental supervision is essential, whether they are using a laptop, desktop, tablet or mobile phone.

KidsWatch™ Parental Control Software provides an integrated time management and internet blocking & monitoring solution with the following key features:

• Restrict Internet & Computer Usage based on a customizable schedule or time limits.
• Restricts chatting/instant messaging based on a time limit or schedule.
• Award-winning automated filter of porn, illegal, vulgar and other inappropriate websites.
• Ability of parent to create White “Trusted” list and Black “Restricted” lists.
• Dynamic Content Blocker – blocks inappropriate banner ads on webpages.
• Automatic notification via email when a suspect phrase or word is written in a chat.

Recognized 8 years running as the #1 Parental Control, Internet Blocking and Time Management software, KidsWatch is easy to set up, easy to use and affordable with a one-time fee for life.

Try It FREE! – No Credit Card Required

Ask yourself these questions about your kids’ activities:

1. What exactly are my children doing online or on their mobile phones?

• Are they chatting with social network sites like Facebook, Snapchat?
• Are they visiting pornographic or other inappropriate sites?
• Are they being bombarded with inappropriate ads on pages for guns, cigarettes, drugs or other illegal activity?

2. How much overall time is really spent on a daily basis on their phone and computer talking to friends or other socializing?

Being a parent is much more difficult than it used to be. We worry about everything – from the food our kids eat, how they are doing academically in school, to the company that they keep.

It is doesn’t make it easier that in most households, both parents work and as a result, there are certain realities that we live with – one of them being the overall monitoring of our children.

Yes, technology in most cases makes things better and more efficient – being able to talk to our kids during the day or evening via cell, sending them text messages or emails. But this same technology communication revolution has also skyrocketed the risks and dangers for children on a daily basis.

Now Here are Some Facts That May Surprise You

1. One in 5 kids between 11-18 have been solicited online.
2. 60% of kids are exposed to porn before age 12.
3. Over 65% of kids have accidentally visited an inappropriate site online.
4. Over 25% of kids have been cyber bullied, but only 10% of these incidents were told to parents.

We trust our kids to do what is right, but there is so much filth lurking on all corners of the internet and as parents, we should be very concerned – even for the innocent child who is 100% aware of all the dangers involved, it is next to impossible for our children to be 100% protected. In addition to our lack of time, it is an impossible task to manually monitor our children’s online activities. The latest internet and mobile technology supersedes make it impossible.

In short, we are simply hoping for the best.

But it shouldn’t be this way. In fact, it is dangerous to your children.

How to Effectively Monitor Your Children – A 2-Tiered Approach

The Absolute Minimum…

Instruct your children to use Safe Search Kids as their default search engine, at home and in school.

For the Ultimate in Internet Safety…

Use Parental Control Software. We encourage you to take a free, no obligation 15 day free trial of the KidsWatch Pro software. It is a full featured free trial account, so you will be able to see the power of the solution and decide if you would like to upgrade to the paid version.

Just click KidsWatch™ Free Trial and in less than 10 minutes, your family will be protected.

I will be the first person to tell you to never click a link in an email from a bank or what you think is a legitimate link to any online account you may have, whether it be iTunes, Netflix, Amazon, Fed Ex, PayPal, USPS… the list is endless and those sending out phishing emails exploit many of these accounts and more.

Even though I know better, it happened to me when I had my guard down. More about that in a moment and how you can protect your online accounts and identity, but first – what exactly is Phishing?

Phishing is a malicious attempt to steal your personal information about an online account you have with a reputable company by sending you a fake email that links to a fake login of that company. It’s pronounced like ‘fishing’ and just like when commercial fisherman case a wide net to catch fish, scammers and hackers send out millions of emails in hopes to catch easy prey who unwittingly click on the links in those emails.

First of all, most online services will never send you a link asking you to sign into your account for any reason. If they do, I’ll explain why you should still not click it and how to access your account safety to see if the email actually came from a legitimate company. In most cases, these malicious emails contain alarming news about your account being compromised or hacked.

We’ve all seem these emails. They come from hackers and scammers that state “Your Account Has Been Locked” or the message I recently received from Netflix:
“Thanks for choosing Netflix membership! due latest security issues we need you to upgrade your account details in order to continue your membership.” Notice how there was even a grammatical error in the message, but yes – I still clicked it. I knew full well that if our account had needed changing or was compromised, Netflix is one of those companies that would have emailed a notice and then instructed her to go to their website via usual methods (such as Googling Netflix or using a trusted bookmark you made in your browser). They won’t put the link in the email.

Well, here’s how it happened to me and why people click on malicious links in emails when they know better.

In my case, I had just made changes to the WiFi password in our home and this of course would effect Netflix’s ability to connect via the devices that were set up to watch Netflix on. Even though I know about phishing and to be careful when receiving these emails, my wife had just mentioned to me that she was unable to connect to Netflix and at the same time the fake Netflix email arrived in my inbox. I was annoyed that Netflix may not be working so I clicked the link. Fortunately, I realized immediately what I’d done so I closed my browser before any harm was done. Upon further investigation, I noticed that the link actually was going to a different website than Netflix, but in that moment of frustration it made sense in my mind to be receiving an email from Netflix.

cyberthieves count on catching people off guard. For example, if you don’t have a Chase bank account, then chances are you won’t pay much attention to the email. You know it’s probably fraudulent. But if I do have an account related to the email, it makes sense to be receiving an email about a problem with your account. Especially when you’ve recently logged in your this account and made changes.

For example, imagine that you just shipped a package via FedEx, and later that day a FedEx email comes in stating that your package can’t be shipped. You immediately get stressed… “What?” If you’re not thinking, you will click the link to see what the problem is. It’s a ‘game of chance’ as hackers send out millions of these emails. They know they will trick some people because by coincidence alone these same people will not only have an account related to the email, some of them will have recently made changes to their account, or shipped a package with UPS, or applied for a loan at a bank.

Phishing, also known as Spoofing, is very common. If you click the link in a plishing email and you attempt to log into your account, thieves gain access to your user name and password. Once inside the account, they have access to all of your personal information.

Beware of Viruses coming as Email Attachments…

Protecting yourself against phishing is as easy as never clicking a link to an online account from within the email. Always go to your account home page or bookmark. Computer infections caused by viruses in email attachments however, are a different story. This is why Anti-Virus software is important to stop spyware, Trojan horses, adware and computer worms. But there are new email virus schemes that employ the same methods as phishing. You may have see them. These emails contain attachments in the form of a seemingly innocent Word doc or a zip file. The email may say, “Your loan has been approved!” Or “Attached is Your Out Standing Invoice”. If you happened to have just applied for a loan or are curious about if you owe money, you will be more likely to open the attachment.

While phishing emails gain access a single account to access your personal information, viruses via email will activate malware that infects your entire computer. In both cases, your personal information is compromised.

If you have accidentally given access to one of your online accounts for any reason or are not sure, log in and change your password as soon as possible.

If you think your computer has been infected by a virus, read more about how to scan and remove malware – as well as protect yourself from attacks.

What Can You Do to Help Stop Hackers Who Send Phishing email?

Virtually every online account service you use will have security departments that investigate phishing. As such, many have email addresses that you can forward these bad emails to for further investigation. When you get a suspicious email, simply Google the company name with the word phishing (i.e. ‘Report PayPal Phishing’ or ‘Report Chase Phishing’) and you will find information about where to send phishing emails and perhaps help these companies catch the cyberthieves.

We are happy to offer a video filtering tool at the top of our website, but what if your child or teen is searching YouTube from a regular browser or smart phone? Fortunately, parental controls are now available on YouTube using a Google account.

Even though YouTube contains questionable material regardless of filtering, there are ways to make it a little safer.

In this article you will learn how to turn on Restricted Mode (formally called Safety Mode) and more importantly – how to lock it.

How to Activate Parental Controls When Searching Directly on YouTube.com

In the past, you could only turn on safe search for Google’s regular search results to ensure safe browsing. After many requests from parents and educators, YouTube now has parental controls so you can implement YouTube Safe Search in your browser when searching from youtube.com.

To implement the Restricted Mode for YouTube, go to YouTube.com and scroll down to the bottom of the page….

You will see a reference to Restricted Mode: Off...

Click the drop down arrow and details about ‘restricted mode’ will appear…

Clicking On followed by the Save button will activate ‘Restricted Mode’ but will not lock it.

Locking YouTube Safe Search

As you will see, it’s very easy to turn safe search on and off. Therefore, you may want to lock it in order to ensure it is always activated for all family members.

To Lock the Parental Control for YouTube, you will need a Google account. To open a free Google account, go to google.com and click “Sign In” in the top right hand corner of their main website. You will then see the option to create a new account.

Now return to YouTube (while signed into your account) and scroll down to the bottom of the page to the Restricted Mode link.

After selecting the “On” button, you will see an option to Save. Then log out of your account.

Restricted Mode is now activated you can now log out of your account. Unlocking restricted mode on YouTube will require you to log into your account. This guarantees that no one else can deactivate the safety setting.

Important: If you have more than one browser on your computer, you will need to follow these steps for each browser. Below is a video that walks you through the process of implementing YouTube Parental Controls that were just explained.

Consider using parental control software with full parental controls to block access to bad areas of the internet. At the very least, use our safe video search tool.

Watch this Video for Step By Step Instructions to Lock YouTube Safe Search

Even with parental controls activated, many parents and educators find YouTube inappropriate for their kids. Our safe video tab on the top of our website offers strict filtering of videos from a variety of safe sources.

At Safe Search for Kids, we welcome the use of our search tool to ensure that safe browsing on Google is always set to the strictest level of filtering, whether it’s being used at home or on every computer in school.

To ensure the ultimate in internet safety for kids, we also encourage the use of internet filtering software to give parental control over how kids access the internet. This is not to be confused with Internet Security Software that protects your computer against viruses.

Clearing Up the Confusion:

There are four areas of online security that people need to be aware of. These are not presented as options, rather – they each offer a different level of security and serve different purposes.

1. Antivirus Software: This is essential basic software that filters your email to protect your computer from becoming infected with a virus or malicious software. No computer should be without this standard software.

2. Internet Security Software: This blocks viruses from infecting your computer due to a cyber attack or in the event you accidentally visit an infected website. Antivirus software is included in this higher level of security by trusted programs such as Emsisoft.

There are other programs specifically designed to remove and block malware.

3. Internet Filtering with Parental Controls: More than likely, this is why you found your way to our website and ultimately to this page. If you are concerned about protecting your kids from harmful online content, you need proper internet filtering which blocks access to the internet according to the age of the child. Read about the specific benefits of Parental Control Software.

4. Safe Search for Kids: The filtering tool on our website is powered by Google to ensure safe search results for all keywords entered. It is a FREE solution when searching Google. While it will block search results for inappropriate search terms entered, it does not block access to other areas of the internet when kids leave our site. This is where internet filtering software should be explored.

Parental Control Software Should Include:

• Content Controls – Flexible content control allows you to select the types of website that are appropriate.
• Program Controls – Control Instant Messengers, P2P File Sharing, and other harmful programs.
• Time Controls – Control the amount of time spent online, and the times when the internet is available.
• Usage Logging – Create and review logs of websites visited, programs used on the Internet, and Instant Messaging Chats.
• Usage Alerts – Be notified instantly via email, text message, or phone call when someone visits inappropriate websites.

As mentioned, internet filtering is not the same as protecting your computer against viruses. To fully protect against viruses and online threats (such as malware on websites) you may also want to consider Anti-Malware Software for virus scanning and malware protection.

Choosing stand alone filtering software greatly improves your kids internet safety and allows parents the ability to set the safety controls for each child according to their age and responsibility.

Additional Solutions: Teaching Good Online Habits:

Learn more about How Covenant Eyes Works.

Software that features both accountability and filtering. What is the difference?

Accountability: When software is installed on any or all computers in your home, you will receive a report emailed to you weekly to show high risk website that were visited. This features does not block content. It is meant for older kids and adults who know that the report will be viewed, and therefore builds good computer habits. The accountability report can be further generated to easily show sites according to various ratings, such as Teen, Mature Teen and Mature.

Web Filtering: This feature of the software filters the internet and blocks potentially harmful content. If offers parental controls to set filtering according to user age, as well as put timelines on how long a user can surfing the internet, as well as restrict hours of use. It is important to note that the Accountability feature can be purchased as a ‘stand alone’ feature. Full filtering comes at the cost of downloading the full software program.

So what about our website – Safe Search Kids? How does that fit into the mix of providing internet safety for kids? For one, our site only restricts potentially harmful websites on Google. Our website simply allows for added security for those who are not installing software filtering.

Safe Search Kids is ideal for schools who want to implement safe search filtering instantly without having to painstakingly turn on safe search within the settings of each computer. This is done by bookmarking our home page, but search engines have their limitations.

Parental control software programs enable you to block internet access in the following ways…

• Filtering websites, videos and music according to custom account settings.
• Provides reports for searches, instant messages and social networks.

Should I Use Additional Safe Search Filtering Software?

It is important to note that Google safe search is not perfect. We strive to provide a healthy balance between screening out illicit material and providing quality search results. For this reason, the ultimate in security can only be achieved with the use of parental control software. This is difficult and costly in a school setting where you have hundreds of computers, which is why Safe Search Kids is a good step towards a safer online environment on a broader level.

When you have control over 1 or 2 computers in you home, it becomes a viable option to consider filtering software options to protect kids, as well as your computer from viruses. The cost is minimal and gives the user much more control over what keywords are filtered out.

The important thing is to do your research and compare all the pros and cons, including costs, before proceeding. Read more about software solutions for kids internet safety.

No search filter can replace parental supervision when it comes to children on the internet, but every little bit helps. Using our free internet filter ensures that Search for Kids SafeSearch is always on.