Many of us must have heard of the horror stories of children getting into trouble because of revealing
their personal details during Internet chats. Sometimes it is the use of parents’ credit card that causes
the trouble. Then there is the issue of children accessing sites that are not suitable for their viewing.
We agree that it is much easier (Well, sometimes at least) to exercise control over your own children in
your own homes whereas the cyber café is an entirely new ballgame. But we are not asking you to tackle this
issue alone. This calls for the action of your Citizen Group.
We cannot gain anything unless people understand the need to come together to address this very important
issue. So the first step is to create awareness in the community for the need to exercise control over
local cyber cafés. Once the community is fully convinced, everyone will see to it that the café people
implement the rules. The following steps need 100% participation and support of your community for 100%
success. And don’t settle for anything less!!
Steps:
1) Set up meetings and awareness campaigns to create awareness. Search the Internet to
find cases where children have got into trouble because of Internet misuse and use them for the campaigns.
But at the same time you will have to guard against creating paranoia among parents.
2) When the community is fully prepared to wage this war, citizen Group members can meet the
café owners for their co-operation.
3) Ask them if it is possible to set aside half the terminals for use by Children Only.
Such terminals can be then set up such that it is impossible to view adult sites using them. This
procedure is very simple and does not even need any parent control software.
4) Mark these “Children Only” terminals with special colored tags that can be seen
from far off so that any child sitting at a non-tagged terminal can be spotted and monitored easily.
5) Discuss the possibility of allocating special timings for children in the cafe.
6) Citizen Group members should conduct surprise raids on the café to ensure that
the rules are being followed.
7) Suggest the possibility of the café containing big posters for:
-- Advising children against giving out personal details in the chat rooms.
-- Urging children to use public chat rooms and avoiding one to one chats unless they
personally know the person they are chatting with.
-- Emphasizing the fact that anyone can use any name to mask his/her real identity.
-- Advising children against using their parents’ credit cards.
-- Displaying the cases used in campaigns so as to warn children.
Procedure for blocking Adult Sites:
Following material has been reprinted from Microsoft Internet Explorer Help pages.
To enable Content Advisor and set limits:
Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.
Double-click the Internet Options icon.
Click the Content tab.
In the Content Advisor area, click Enable.
If you've already enabled Content Advisor, click Settings, and then
type the supervisor password.
Click a category in the list, and then drag the slider to set the limits you want to use.
Repeat this process for each category you want to limit, and then click OK.
If a supervisor password has not already been set up for your computer, you are prompted to create one.
To specify Web sites that others can always or never see:
Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.
Double-click the Internet Options icon.
Click the Content tab.
In the Content Advisor area, click Enable.
If you've already enabled Content Advisor, click Settings, and then type the supervisor password.
Click the Approved Sites tab, type the Internet address (URL) of a Web site, and then
choose whether you want others to always or never have access to this site.
Repeat this process for each Web site that you want to set access for.
Organizations and Articles:
Cyber Crime Investigation Cell
Stopping a cyber-stalker
Feedback :
Please write to us for any suggestions, sites or articles.
Back to Live Problems - Main Section
