Amazon.com Review
A no-nonsense guide for keeping kids protected and informed on the Internet is an essential book for any family with a home computer.
The Parent's Guide to Protecting Your Children in Cyberspace comes highly recommended, with kudos from countless corporations, governmental agencies, and nonprofit organizations. Equally useful for long-time users and newcomers to the Internet, parents will find a wealth of useful tips presented in a friendly and entertaining manner.
Beginning with basic questions and answers about why laws are sometimes different online than they are in other commercial arenas, author Parry Aftab goes on to explain some of the fundamentals of search engines, ISPs, and e-mail accounts--experienced users can safely skip this area with no harm done. Aftab makes it clear that it is up to parents and caregivers to appropriately educate kids in online safety--while the benefits of including the Internet in your child's education are tremendous, there are some dangers (ranging from pretty minor to severe) that all family members need to be made aware of and taught how to avoid. Aftab includes a terrific list of widely approved kid-friendly sites, a solid glossary of common terms and abbreviations used in e-mail, and simple bullet-point lists outlining ways to provide protection such as passwords, backing up important files, placing your computer in a central location, and not allowing unsupervised online access until you're fully convinced they're ready for it. More than any other suggestion, teaching your kids accountability and safety is emphasized. Older children and teenagers may benefit from reading some of the personal anecdotes and interviews--such clear-cut stories are sure to make a lasting impression. --Jill Lightner
Product Description
Just about everyone agrees that certain places in cyberspace are inappropriate for children. What people don't agree on is how to keep kids from wandering into areas where they don't belong. From the ACLU to Congress, local PTAs and national teacher's organizations, the issue is devise and polarizing. Given recent events such as what happened in Littleton, Colorado, it is also becoming clear that there's more to protecting children in cyberspace than just blocking pornographic sites with filtering programs. How can parents, teachers and librarians navigate this confusing issue without overstepping legal boundaries while at the same time protecting kids from the dangers--both hidden and obvious--that abound on the Net? Internationally respected attorney and cyber-expert Parry Aftab offers a sensible, clear-cut guide to protecting children from the dark side of the Web. Based upon her self-published book A Parent's Guide to the Internet and How to Protect Your Children in Cyberspace, Aftab details the threats that lurk throughout the world wide web, from spam and chatrooms, to cyber porn and cyber stalkers, to sites that promote violence fantasy role-playing and hatred. She then goes on to detail what steps parents and teachers can and should take to keep children from accessing certain sites.
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