Tips for Guarding Your Privacy and Keeping Kids Safe Online

The Internet can be a wonderful place.  Online, you can find just about anything—educational resources, health information, shopping, and entertainment.

But with the good comes reason for caution, especially for parents.

As your ISP, we want to help you and your family experience the best of the Web while avoiding some of the dangers.  Here, we provide some tips for helping maintain privacy and keeping your family safe.

Talk with your kids

Talk with your kids about Internet safety.  It’s important that your children understand what is “okay” behavior—their own and that of other people—as well as what kinds of behavior is unacceptable.

Before your kids go online, it’s a good idea to talk with them about materials they might encounter.  Advise them to:

• Tell you when they come across materials they don't think they should see.
  
  
• Never give out personal information, especially a phone number.  At sites such as Google and The White Pages users can perform "reverse lookups":  by typing in a phone number, a user will get the address associated with that number - and can get a map of the location.
  
  
• Never fill out online forms.  Never enter contests online.
  
  
• Never visit adult areas on the Web.

You’d be surprised how many children believe it’s okay to give personal information about their families in order to enter an online contest. 

To protect your privacy, it’s in your best interest to discuss acceptable online behavior with your children.

Protect your privacy

Google has an option that will allow you to remove your telephone number from the database that is linked to the mapping feature.

Visit the site to check if your number is listed by entering your full telephone number (e.g. 555-555-5555) in the search window.  

If the number appears in the mapping database, an icon that looks like a telephone
will appear next to the result.