Access control
Compiled with additional material from CygnetF1, GMcD, Harassed Dad and hungrybuffalo who often contribute to discussions at The Motley Fool financial site. Many thanks.
Access security
Many parents worry about the interaction between young people and the Internet. The problem can be seen at various levels. In no particular order of importance these are:-
are you in the right place?
the download and potential wrecking of your computer
the commercial pressures on the user
the accidental/deliberate viewing of unsuitable material
young people being enticed by dishonesty
There are really no watertight solutions to any of the problems mentioned. Whatever controls are put in place are likely to be circumventable or cramp the style of operation.
Are you in the right place?
This particular section is of general interest and not particularly specific to young people.
First of all - are you sure you are looking at the right site? Sometimes you may get an e-mail that links to a particular site. The e-mail appears to come from an organisation that you have legitimate dealings with such as eBay or your bank. But is it genuine?
The addressing mechanism that is used on the internet, makes it easy to hide true links. For example the @ symbol is usually used in e-mail as part of the address. Sometimes the bit before the @ is relevant sometimes it is not like with say, Freeserve amongst others (see the page on E-mail Basics). However when the symbol appears on a web page address, the connection discards anything before the @ symbol - if relevant the target site will deal with it.
As an example, click on the following in turn and see where you end up!
www.ebay.com@www.erio.co.uk
www.anyoldrubbish.co.uk@www.erio.co.uk
In these cases the real target is clearly indicated after the @. However if instead of the www.erio.co.uk you had a series of numbers, you could be confused into thinking that these are just the page extensions for the eBay or anyoldrubbish sites.
Another thing you should do is to hover - do NOT click - the mouse over the embedded link. The connecting address is normally shown in the bottom bar of your browser. Do ensure that it bears a reasonable resemblance to the address you are hovering over. As you realise, the page author can arrange for you to see
anything
on a link.
Hover over the following example:-
www.eBay.co.uk
In short, examine links thoroughly before clicking - the more 'serious' the link (like banks and other on-line accounts) the more careful you should be.
Another method of finding out whether a site is legitimate is to select a web page, then type into the address bar the following:-
javascript:alert(%22Real URL of this site is: %22 + location.protocol + %22//%22 + location.hostname +%22/%22);
If you find the above useful simply save the line as it is as a favourite bookmark. Of course, the legitimacy of the site name is itself open to interpretation. At least it should agree with what the page itself says.
Downloads and commercial pressure
The existence of many sites is based on the number of page viewings and on how long (often referred to as 'stickiness') users stay on the site. Armed with such figures the site provider can make a case that leads to advertising and referral revenue. This is not a bad thing. It can give one a sources of free, genuinely useful, information. For example if you are into shares, you can now access nearly as much published information as professional traders at no cost.
Stickiness can happen because of genuinely useful content. However in many cases the only reason why someone might stay on a site longer than necessary is because of some gimmick. With the proliferation of unmetered access stickiness is perhaps less of a problem now than it was a few years ago. Thus the gimmick of a simple on-line game that could easily be made available for download can be excused. What is inexcusable is a site in which information is deliberately hard to find and with unnecessary complex graphics or structure just to make you stay on-site.
Downloads on the other hand can raise concerns. If you download some software or datafile, you have a pretty good idea what it is and a reason for the download. On the other hand it is to my mind wrong that young people are encouraged by various sites to download a 'must have' piece of software that often has little value other than that of advertising or of locking one into a particular computing methodology.
Often you are invited to download something and you haven't got a clue what it is! This is likely to be an update or a new plug-in, the sort of software that adds functionality to your internet browser - typical are extensions that allow the browser to handle audio-visual material properly. If such download invitations come from a site of known repute and your computer configuration is fairly standard, the chances are that the need for the plug-in has been correctly identified and there is probably no harm in accepting it. Possible problems are the long time it might take to do the download and whether it will install cleanly in your machine. In the U.K. at least, it is probably easier to note what the plug-in is and then seek a magazine with a 'freebie' disc that includes that particular item. Most magazine discs include, as fillers, what are considered industry-standard plug-ins. Check it is the latest version.
Will your machine croak when you install some new software? The potential for a crash is always there. Take the case of a plug-in. It is very difficult to design installation software that will cater for all configurations of machines. Thus you could end up with something going wrong and affecting the performance of your computer. Unless you know better, when installing plug-ins and updates accept all the default settings on the assumption that the installation program can read the state of your machine more accurately than you. The same goes for the first installation of any new software.
It would of course be self-defeatist not to keep your software up to date with various updates for fear of crashes. Needless to say the more updates/new software installations you do the more the chances that something will go wrong at some point.
By the law of averages at some time your machine is likely to crash irretrievably. With this in mind try and get to know how to restore a machine to working order or at least, make sure you know 'a man who can'. It would help considerably if all master discs are kept together (away from the computer) together with any documentation that has passwords and serial numbers. You should also have a policy on back-ups that gives you peace of mind - a restore would then be a couple of hours inconvenience in the knowledge that your precious data is safe. There is under 'New Customers' a page on protecting your data. There is also a page on E-mail basics that includes a note on viruses.
Young people and unsuitable material
Quite frankly parental control is the answer. After all if you are the sort of parent that would not let a young person read just any book or watch just any film, why should the internet be handled any different? On the other hand if you don't care, why should you care about internet control? These statements are not meant to be confrontational - I am just pointing out the two main scenarios.
As I said before whatever you do can be deliberately or accidentally circumvented and you would also limit the scope of internet operations. There are basically two kinds of protection on offer, the kind that bans access to specific sites and the kind that scans for specific words or phrases.
One type of software is used to ban 'no-no' sites. The trouble is that quite often you are also making parts of sites that would be useful to search, part of the no-no (Excite I would consider one of these). The other problem is that such controls are fairly easy to bypass, or to arrive at such sites by an indirect route such as say, having done a usergroup search with re-direction.
Note that some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) do offer this kind of service. Also your internet browser probably has a simple mechanism to do this. It can be bypassed quite easily and it is not very good. A severe setting probably wipes out about 50% of very ordinary sites! If you use Internet Explorer you will find the settings in Tools-Internet Options-Security.
The other kind of control is one that searches for specific words such as bomb or sex etc.. Again these can give problems. The ones that think they are clever by looking for even embedded words end up being as humorous as translation software! Try doing a purely geographic project with such software and a subject line of Middlesex or Scunthorpe.
At the end of the day it becomes a matter of trust between you and the child or perhaps an old-fashioned promise that all hell will break loose if rules are not respected! Remember if you must the power of fuse removal, door locks, and perhaps the most realistic, machine password protection! Do bear in mind that for the determined, they or a school friend will soon figure out how to by-pass any filters you put in place!
Being aware of all this, you may decide that some control is better than nothing. It probably makes sense for the very young and in say, primary schools where Internet access can be usefully limited to just a few sites. I would suggest that 'no-no' software is the better choice. Unfortunately I do not have any experience of such software. If you search for 'parental control software' you will get many hits. It is, of course, best to go by recommendation.
There is another alternative if your concern is the natural curiousity of a child rather than the accidental coming across unsuitable material. After all at some point they are bound to offer a rude word to a search engine and proceed to do their Ph.D. (Life) on the basis of the results. You could position the computer where it is in view of others and also password protect it so that no Internet activity can take place without your knowledge. Or you could let it be known that the computer logs all activity on it - that all keyboard strokes are secretly stored and visited pages logged. Incidentally there is quite a bit of this kind of software about.
They are out to get your precious one!
In order for the sicker elements of society to get hold of your precious one there needs to be interaction and that could be e-mail but is more likely to be through one of the many chat lines. Good terms to look for are ICQ, IRC and various with the word 'messenger'.
In a world of teeny mobile messages, chat lines can be seen as a natural extension (even though they pre-date mobile phones) to such activity. It would be a pity to ban the use of chat lines because of potential dangers. They serve a useful lesson in social interactions - young ones need to learn to make their own judgements about people. At least on the internet they are not going to get run over, lost, get their pockets picked, or cost them money to get home.
Chat lines tend to be clearly defined for particular users. It is thus easy to identify those for young people and pose in one as a young person, as a means to some ulterior motive. This pretence can then be use to extract information. There is, of course, nothing wrong in adults joining in a young persons chat line. It does perhaps take a certain resilience to tolerate the teeny drivel that goes on.
Some adults do worry unduly about their name, address etc. being traced. As said before a determined user can find ways around protection schemes but in general it is very difficult to trace the source of someone - tracing is normally based on the information exchange that might take place. The reason why tracing is difficult is to do with the way your ISP connects you to the Internet. It is a little bit like tracing telephone calls as seen in films. It generally requires the co-operation of your ISP and some authority like the police to establish the mechanisms that will lead to a successful trace.
So how do you protect young people? Education is the answer. Ensure that you have a set of rules in place and that through understanding, they will be obeyed.
A typical set of rules might be the following:-
For very young people, ask to see the intended chat lines. This will allow you to ensure that it is appropriate - teenage banter and bragging could be quite disturbing to those much younger.
Be wary of chat rooms with names that imply that they are inhabited by children. Some might be just a pretence. Stick to officially set up lines from well known sites.
Do not allow camera or speech links.
As for user rules:-
Always use a nickname.
Never give your personal details on-line such as your surname, address, email, phone number.
Never give personal details of people you know.
Restrict lengthy conversations to people you know in real life.
If the conversation makes you feel uneasy or unhappy, just switch off!
In conclusion
The internet is a big place - if you wouldn't let your kids go to London for the day unescorted, they're not old enough to go on the net unsupervised.
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Page last modified on 15th July 2006 - some minor changes