Keeping your children safe on the internet survey and your top tips

[CarrieMumsnet]

To coincide with Safer internet day we've launched a survey to find out how parents tackle the tricky issue of their children's internet use, with the aim of producing a Mumsnet how-to guide on how we can all ensure safe surfing.

Please (pretty please) take the survey here and give yourself the chance of winning a fab Siblu holiday

and then (pretty pretty please) post your top tips on how you keep your children safe when they use the internet on this thread

Big thanks

MNHQ

We've been working on this survey and report all week and today discovered (thro dd's best friend's mum) that my dd had seen "a woman putting a man's penis in her mouth and sucking" (on youtube) while on a playdate (dd didnt tell friend which playdate). Felt sick and . DD is 9 and we haven't really done the birds and bees in any detail at all, although we have talked about not talking to strangers on the internet and there being some nasty stuff on there.

Can't really talk directly/in detail to dd about it as best friend told her mum in strictest confidence (and told her not to tell me) - so have to find a more roundabout route.

But there was I blithely filling in survey saying I didn't think my children had come across anything too nasty/ of a sexual nature. At home they're supervised, and I know exactly what sites they're on, but what about when they are at other folks' houses?

How do you say to a playdate person - by the way you don't let them on the computer unsupervised do you? And if you do, please don't?

Anyway, sorry for such a sad and sordid post - not sure what my top tip would be. Draw up family rules for use of the internet and post them by the computer, is one that I;ve come across and will follow. Might not solve everything but might at least open a dialogue and let the child talk about what they've seen? Plus investigate some of the software people have suggested. Anyone got any other advice/tips?

Oh and please please fill in the survey and encourage others to do it. If you have children of different ages you can fill it in more than once (with different aged child in mind). We think this is a really important subject and it would be great to have a really authoritative survey of over 1000 parents (we're at 635 at the moment) as well as some tips on how you're already dealing with it.

Thanks to those who've filled it in so far and apologies for epic post!

you might want to investigate tis further. because out and out porny penis sucking on you tube isnt there - i cant find it - it isn't allowed. there is insinuation - head bobbing etc. - but it is ither a) great becuase your dd hasn't seen something quite as graphic as you think - or b) the mother is lying and you need more detail.

So sorry to hear that CarrieMumsnet
Very hard to think about, but we should all consider it possible.

I would prefer my dds not to use other peoples computers or with take part if their friends are. But how can you know if they are in another home.

I have told my dd not to use youtube, I think I will have another talk with her. She has a laptop (never in her own room), but we are not always in the same room with her.

dd2 (8yrs) uses a computer next to me and if I'm not in the room, her dad is. We can both see the screen clearly from where we sit.

Terrible that youtube takes no responsibility for its content (as far as I know).

Yes dd uses age-appropriate sites as I mentioned earlier, with parental controls such as bookworm says.

dd's school state in their newsletters not to allow our children to use bebo, etc. This is wonderful reinforcement of the general message. You-tube is banned for dd in our house but I know she uses the net at friends houses. So far no reports of anything untoward.

Carrie

Carrie, that's so sad, and difficult, and bloody worrying.

We're the first generation of parents who've had to deal with the internet and it's inherent problems. We quite literally have no idea what they're looking at, given unhindered access.

I can't really fill out the survey as ds isn't age-relevant yet, but I'm glad this thread's here.

Gosh Carrie that's shocking

If you use a search engine ie google
on the search page you will read in small text 'preferences'

click on 'preferences' and thena new window comes up, half way down click on the box
'Use strict filtering (Filter both explicit text and explicit images'

that takes 30 seconds and can help straight away.

with any search even on youtube it could be a random search word that would bring something like that up. Same for google images any random word can bring a surprise if you are not filtering.

my daughter has set msn so that she can check all her daughters messages.

Blimey Carrie, that must have been a shock. eek.

no i dont like internet for children not at all ...sad

Oh Carrie that is really awful

A few months ago, I was on a newspaper forum surfing around, as you do, and clicked on an innocent looking link and it was a photoshopped picture of madeleine mcann with someone's penis in her mouth.

I was, and still am, revolted by the image - so god knows how your DD is coping with it

I think the most important thing is to make it a matter of course that all internet access happens in the living room or a family room. And that there's lots of talk about what's OK and what's not.

I also think - and I feel as if I'm alone in this - that children shouldn't be allowed to lie about their age to access sites. You have to say you're 13 before you can join Bebo, for example - so how come most of my dd's friends were on it at 10? The same goes for Runescape.

We only set up internet access when ds1 was 10 and ds2 9. They both had a chat about never clicking on pop ups etc, never giving out personal details. They have both recently set up facebook profiles on condition that I have their passwords.

I would've thought that that would be the easiest single measure to ensure their safety - they know that I can access their fb profile at any time. The computer is in a room that has 3 doors leading into it - we are all going backwards and forwards past it at any time. We explained that if they look at unsuitable images our broadband account is in dh's name so they could actually get their dad into serious trouble.

I've never been one for 'banning' things - I think if you do that then whatever it is suddenly has irresistable allure.

It's important to give them the benefit of your trust and for them to understand the reasons for not being tempted to access unsuitable sites.

have do9ne survery.

recently my pc got hacked. no idea what happened, but it changed all the images on my pc wallpaper to s+m images. fortunatly no penis' or sexual acts being played out/ but dd1 switched on the pc to boot it up, and then came running in saying 'mum there are naked ladies on the computer and one is hitting the other' i was like WTF! then norton kicked in and cleaned it all up.

so now i always switch on the pc for them and go through a quick run through of sites to make sure all is ok, (dropping by mumsnet of course) then hand over the pc to the kids.

make sure all children see this

Tell them not to trust people on the net,if you have to tell them every single day then it's better than living the consequences of sexual grooming.

The men who groom and exploit young girls are very devious,manipulative and dangerous

Don't let your daughter be the next victim

I've had enough of this smug and sanctimonious thread at the top every bloody day.
Can we move on now please?

I have parental controls on the boys' computer which requires my password every time they want to visit a website that I haven't already approved. DS2 has asked if I will remove the controls as "I won't go on any websites that I shouldn't". Thing is he may not realise the website is suspect until I've seen it, so the controls stay - although they are as much of a pain to me as to the boys as I have to drop whatever I'm doing to enter the password.

have you gone mad, Moondog

Hi Moondog, if you'd like the thread to move from the top of active convos all you have to do is persuade another 3-400 folks to fill in the survey

Thanks all for your words of advice, do keep them coming.

Would like to hear more about different types of parental controls as am mostly ignorant...

...but do discuss which sites he's allowed on and at present, he sticks to it. But realise will have to stay ahead of the game the older he gets... Have had long discussions with him about issues around giving out personal info, phishing and strangers not being who they say they are. And he seems to get why these might be an issue. i have said I will look at some role-playing sites he's interested in before allowing him yay or nay but I'm really not too sure about these since there seem to be so many strangers pretending to be someone else (doh, of course I know that's the point...) but have no idea whether to interpret this as potentially sinister or not...

Ho hum

Can I just say that we found out the reason the computers are off at the gym we are members of is that the recent power cut we experienced caused something to happen to the internet filters. The children's computers were then used to access inapropriate sites and a little girl accidentaly stumbled across these sites.

I would always supervise a child using comuters I have no knowledge of outside our home. I would now never take for granted that a computer in a child friendly area (the computer in question was in the children's area, separate to the adult only area) has the approparitae filters.

Just though I'd pass that on...

As an added incentive for those of you (and there are quite a few !) who haven't already completed our Internet safety survey, we've added an additional prize of a fab TV, thanks to Mr Men for supplying this.
First out of the hat will get a choice between this and the wonderful Siblu holiday and the runner up will get what's left.
Best of luck
MNHQ

do not let let children hide away in teir bedrooms with the pc where you can not see what they are doing \