Guest Author - Debbie Jacobsen

With school starting back, children will spend a lot more time on the computer. Nightly homework, research, special projects, and term papers will soon be routine again, and internet access will be required for everything.

For responsible parents of school-age children who rely on computers and the internet for school work, two security issues come to mind. The first has to do with protecting kids from online predators and inappropriate websites. The other thing to be concerned about involves protecting the homework, term papers, and projects that our children work so hard to create.

If you have school-age children who use computers, it’s important to use parental control software to protect them online, and to ensure that their valuable data and documents are safely backed up. The easiest way to protect your child and his/her computer data is to use parental control software and
subscribe to an online data backup service.

Parental Control Software

Net Nanny is by far the best internet protection software you can buy for a child’s computer. It includes a powerful web filtering tool that blocks access (via a customizable “blacklist”) to websites that are known for illicit material and/or online predators. An internet timer lets you control how long children can stay on the internet each day, as well as specify times that the internet is accessible. Privacy protection prevents personal information such as account numbers, address, passwords, and user id’s from leaving the computer, and will not allow predators and scammers to track your child’s internet browsing habits.

It also includes a pop up blocker, which prevents any inappropriate “surprises”, as well as application controls that let you block access to instant messaging, online games, or chatrooms if desired. Net Nanny is affordable (around $40), is easy to install, and can be completely customized for up to 12 different users. Net Nanny provides “age appropriate” protection for kids between the ages of 5 to 17.

Online Backup

Computer hard drives have a lifespan, and can “crash” at any time, making all your data inaccessible. A computer virus can instantly corrupt all the data files on a computer, and spyware can cripple a system so badly that the only way to restore the computer to working order is to reformat the hard drive – often resulting in data loss. With a computer that a child uses, the most common cause of data loss is accidental deletion.

The computer that your child uses often contains valuable “works in progress” such as term papers, research, and book reports. “Murphy’s Law” indicates that the computer hard drive will crash just before an important paper is due, often taking month’s worth of hard work with it. You can easily back up your hard drive yourself by copying all the data to a CD on a daily basis, but most people find this is “too much trouble”, or forget to do it regularly.

The best way to ensure that your child’s hard work is never lost is to use an online backup service. Carbonite internet backup is the easiest and most cost-effective method I’ve seen, costing only $5 per month for unlimited “continuous” backup. With Carbonite, you “set it and forget it”. There is no need to remember to backup daily, Carbonite automatically does it for you. If you need to restore after a crash, simply install the Carbonite software (free download) and select the files you want to restore. Carbonite is free to try, and the cheapest data protection you can buy.

The best way to keep your child and his/her valuable school work safe is to use Net Nanny along with Carbonite online backup.