Internet Filtering or Web Parental Control! Would you use them to protect your kids?

The internet is wonderful technology. It has indeed broken down many borders and anyone with access to the internet could practically get their hands on any types of information and knowledge anywhere in the world today. Unfortunately, not everything found on the internet is good and beneficial. Many are controversial and pose serious threats to any decent societies.

Concerned parents have always been sceptical of the internet. While they did not dismiss the fact that the internet can provide information and knowledge at the tip of their fingers, they do worry about how the internet could affect their kids who are too young and naïve to differentiate what is right or wrong. Hence, most Malaysian parents took the easiest way out and opt for not having internet access at home. I personally view this as a bad decision made by Malaysian parents. By dismissing the internet from being used at home, Malaysian parents are actually closing their doors to the world. In the long run, the whole family would be missing a lot!

Fortunately for Malaysian parents nowadays, there are many good and reliable internet filtering or parental control software that could help them filter and block any bad online elements. Internet filtering and parental control software is a great tool for any concerned parents in the world for it would allow parents to monitor or limit what their children can see or do on the internet. The best thing is that some of this software can be freely downloaded from the internet!

I personally use Blue Coat K9 Web Protection parental control software at home and I must say that I am very much satisfied! I could easily block negative web categories such as pornography, adult, nudity, drugs and many more simply by clicking on a few checkboxes on the control panel. I can also manually block any unwanted websites or web pages simply by adding a few specific URL keywords into the system. I could even restrict surfing time to my likings and this would ensure that children and kids would not miss their much needed sleeping time.

Introducing internet filtering or parental control software at home would not make any parents that popular with their children in the first few weeks. Kids would nag and nag, make a lot of nuisances and noises but they would soon get use to it. Parents would just have to bear with their grunts and complaints; after all we are doing this for their own sake anyway.

Parents have to accept the fact that kids nowadays are internet savvy and we should not deny them access to the internet blatantly like what most Malaysian parents have done. I would prefer to see that parents opt for a compromise like what I am doing at the moment. Let our children develop their learning years on the internet at home but let them do so with our indirect guidance and monitoring by using internet filtering or parental control software. Making sure that the internet would only provides acceptable information and knowledge to children is now very much possible and parents may now stop worrying too much about it. Let us make the internet a wonderful place not only for kids but for the whole family too!

Now that you knew more about internet filtering or parental control software, would you use them to protect your kids anytime soon? Please place your vote here.