Instant Messaging Safety Tips - Solution For IM Safety

Following are the Instant Messaging Safety Tips or Measures that parent must implement in order to protect their kids:

Encourage children to change password regularly. For IM safety purposes, parents must teach children how to create a strong password that involves text, numbers and special characters. They must also change the password at least once every month. Strong password that changes regularly helps to protect IM account and keep hackers and online predators at a certain distance.

No personal information to be given. As stated on the internet chat safety and blog safety, that no personal information to be posted online. It means that children have to be remain anonymous as possible. It also means that no personal information such as first and last name, school name, sport team, city they are located at etc… has to be given out.

Avoid in-person meetings. Children must be taught not meet with someone that they met through IM or through any other internet communication medium. This is one of the crucial tip among other important instant messaging safety tips.

Avoid opening attachments and Links. Most of the viruses are spread through attachment. Children must be taught to seek parents permissions to download any attachment, and parents must verify that the particular attachment is run through an anti-virus. Children must not open any attachment or click to a link send by a person that they do not know.

Children must log IM conversation. Parents must make sure that their children knows how to log IM conversation, and they must log all their IM conversation. Children being children can naively do something on IM that can cause harm to them, you as parent may take notice firsthand by seeing their logs and preventing it before that problem escalates. For instances when parent finds out that their children are not logging their IM conversation, then they can use internet monitoring software to capture their IM conversation.

Discourage Children to use public computer for internet services. Talking about Instant Messaging Safety Tips, I can't emphasize enough that children should only be allowed to use IM service either on their home computer or school network provided the network is secure.

Children must also be taught not to use auto-login feature provided by IM service. By using this feature kids do not have to type in their user id or password every time they want to login to their IM, which is great, but imagine what can happen if a child using a public computer use this option? Yes right! he/she has allowed all users of that public computer to use his/her IM. This may lead to identity theft. If your computer is not protected setting auto-login at your home computer's IM, can also lead to identity theft. Any hacker can hack your computer, and then they do not have to do much to get all the contact information from the IM which was set to auto-login.

Do not add a contact that you do not know. For IM safety purposes, children must be taught not to add people that they do not know off. If someone sends a message to add him/her in contact their list make sure that they know that person fairly well.

In some cases, parents even have to resort to stop their children using IM. To achieve this, parents can use IM block/filtering software which are commercially available on the market. IM filtering software can even filter or block out the words that parents do not want their child to either read or send.

Parental control software can also help parents to schedule the usage of IM, for example parents can schedule the IM software to be used only by children when they (parents) are at home, or IM can only be used at day time.

In addition to the above Instant Messaging safety tips, it is essential for parents to take active role in their children's internet life. Parents should remain aware about what IM their children are using and for what purposes. Parents should also know about persons that your children talk to. Monitoring tool helps to achieve this goal, and assure parents that their children are not fallen into wrong hands.

I hope Instant Messaging Safety Tips article assisted you in creating a safe internet environment for your children.

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