Perhaps the best way to secure online safety for children is to invest in a filtering program. With varying degrees of success these programs prevent unsuitable websites from being displayed.

• However, it’s important to remember that such filter programs are no substitute for real parental controls; neither are they completely successful – i.e. they’ve been known to block out sites that are perfectly appropriate. For instance, your 12-year-old has a GCSE human biology project and needs to research some material on breast cancer. Filter programs could prevent some key sites from being displayed because of the word ‘breast’.

• Further, sites specifically and safely aimed at teenagers can be blocked, because many of the sex sites include the word ‘teen’ in their title or keywords. Filter programs would successfully block your child from looking at ‘Club Eighteen’ – a pornographic site, but would also stop them from looking at ‘Teens vs. dyslexia’ (http://www.ldteens.org) which is aimed at helping children who have reading and writing difficulties. Hence, filter programs can be useful but they also pose problems.

The reason filter programs cause difficulties is that they almost always include a list of ‘hit words’. If these words appear in a page title or in the ‘keywords’ that are used by search engines to find such pages, they will not be displayed.

As Internet pornographers and others who run ‘adult’ sites have found, the use of these keywords vastly increases the number of visitors. Consequently, to make sure filter programs work to their best effect, you need to keep the list of suggested ‘hit words’ otherwise you’re likely to get a hit and miss of appropriate and inappropriate sites being displayed.

Most programs also include an updating service that provides a complete list of actual ‘banned’ web site addresses. This means that even if they don’t use keywords, your child cannot view the pages.

Setting up a filter can take time and it will need constant vigilance to ensure the correct sites are blocked. Filters are a worthwhile investment, but at the same time they are not a panacea and must be seen as part of an overall approach to online safety. Your active involvement in a child’s use of the Web is by far a better control; filter programs are merely there to help you when you can’t be with your children.

Amongst the key filtering programs available are:

• Cyber Patrol

• CYBERsitter

• KidDesk

• Net Nanny

• Norton Internet Security

• Surf Watch

You can find details of all these at the following page: www.enough.org This is a table that shows what each program does and whether or not there is a version for the PC or the Macintosh. Links to the programs are also available.