Parental control software plays an important role to keep tabs on young web surfers by regulating internet. Parental control software not only help parents to restrict what their children can see and read online, but also enable parents to select what computer programs children can use and what not. Parental control program also provides monitoring feature to log kids' Internet activity.

The need for parental controls for Internet activity varies, of course, with the age of the Web surfer. It requires different set of abilities to teach kindergarten the ABCs of the Internet, and different tools to tab their Internet activity when compared to preventing a teenager from posting his home address on social networking site such as MySpace.

This page is divided into three major section, all dealing with various kind of parental control. Sections are:

1. Internet Filter -- Censor or block content or websites.
2. Monitoring Software -- Records internet activity.
3. True Parental Control Software -- Act as both internet filter and monitoring tool.

The following guidelines can help parents to decide which tool to use to keep adult content away from their children and keep online predators at bay:

Internet Filter

• Average age of first Internet exposure to pornography is 11 years old.
• Child pornography generates $3 billion annually.
• Four out of five 12 - 14 year olds have had exposures to hard core.

Internet Filter also known as Content Control, Censorware or Web Filtering Software is the first line of defence against preventing children to access inappropriate sites. As the name suggest Internet Filter censor or block content or websites that parent do not want their children to access. Not only Internet filter block websites, but also block pop ups, chat room, IM, emails, blog, etc… Most of the Internet Filter also provides facility to limit their children's Internet and computer usage.

Internet filtering come with so many features, that it becomes difficult to prioritize what features to look for while buying internet filter. To make thing easier I've written a guide that will assist you in choosing an internet filter.

Internet filtering capabilities can be acquired and utilized from many different sources, such as OS, ISP etc... therefore, I have written a complete guide that will help users to acquire internet filtering capabilities from different sources.

Various studies that have been carried out on internet filtering program have concluded that they are not 100% effective. Some internet filtering program either blocks too much or too little. Then, internet filter program does not record child's IM conversation or logs every key that child's type during internet conversation or while using computer. Even, they do not show how the child's online profile looks like on their blogs and on social networking sites. Both of which are heaven for both online predators and for online fraudsters to perform their heinous crimes and identity theft. Here parental monitoring software plays its part as complementing the weaknesses of the internet filter. By monitoring the internet activity of your child on the Internet, parents can prevent their children from being exposed to the less salubrious aspects of internet.

There is another important reason for having a parental monitoring software. Most of the internet filtering program can be disabled by children who possesses same basic computer knowledge to perform illegal activities such as downloading pirated software, music, movies or spyware. Monitoring program that runs in a stealth mode (hidden from children’s eye), parents can immediately know if there children have disabled the internet filtering program, and then can take immediate steps to make sure what there children’s are up to.

You can follow my guide on guide on choosing Monitoring Software, which will assist you in making right choice.

Internet Filter + Monitoring Software - True Parental Control Software

Best available option is to educate children on how to use internet based technologies. But only education want solve problems because children are innocent. Online Predators can easily lure them to do something that can harm them. For example chat rooms, that appears to be child friendly there are online predators roaming around freely and posting links which once clicked by the child may start downloading spyware. Internet filtering program not only blocks downloading, but also blocks inappropriate content. In short, internet filtering program along with monitoring program help parents to keep their children from the dark side of the internet.

Lets face it, we as parents cannot constantly monitor our kids for 24 hours, but internet in available for 24 hours. By having remote monitoring capability provided by monitoring software, parents can log from anywhere to a website and depending upon the monitoring software can look either to the recorded data or real time data to see what their children are doing on the internet. Even parents can shut down the internet connection or the specific application remotely, if they found their children doing something inappropriate on the internet.

To summarize it's recommended to have a parental control software that provides both internet filtering and monitoring capabilities. I've found WebWatcher among one of those that provides best of both the capabilities (filtering and monitoring). I've written a guide on selecting Parental Control Software, that will assist you in making right choice.

                   Looking For A Good Parental Control Software?

I've find Webwatcher as the best parental control software. 
To learn more Click Here. You can also read my WebWatcher - Parental Control Software Review.