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What Can Parental Control Limit?

One of the first question that you as a parent needs to ask about parental controls is just what do they limit and how do they do just that. There are many different ways that predators can come into contact with your child. You need to use parental controls as well as education to help protect them from all areas in which they are vulnerable. Think of it in other instances. You probably taught your child a secret, family password that was put in place to allow an adult other than you to pick up your child with. But, that level of protection doesn’t protect them from strangers that approach them walking home from school. Parental controls must cover all areas of vulnerability.

Areas Your Child Needs Protection

Here are a few of the most important ways that you need to protect your child when they are online. Remember, this isn’t everything and with new technologies as well as new ways to meet others online happening every day, you still need to monitor other areas as well.

• Chatting: Chat rooms are a common thing online. There are those chat rooms set up for children as young as ten to talk about games and school. Your parental controls should allow for some protection from chat rooms that aren’t approved by you or aren’t known to be kid safe areas.

• Email: Email addresses can easily be obtained. It only takes the right words in an e-mail’s subject line to get your child to open on the email and get into trouble. Parental controls can limit who can send email to your child.

• The Web: The web browsing abilities that your child has are also important. Parental controls must protect your child from visiting websites that are not appropriate or ones that you specifically block.

• Instant Messaging or IM’s: One of the most common ways to chat online today is through instant messaging. It’s private and easy to use. Parental controls can help block unwanted individuals from chatting with your child.

All of these parental controls can be adjusted to fit your child’s needs, age and your preferences. Consider limiting all of the options to fit your child. When you implement these parental controls, you help to protect your child when they are doing the things they want and need to do online.