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What threats await your child
The Internet is a vast repository of information - informative, helpful but sometimes harmful. When your child sees harmful content, the effect on its mind is traumatic. Given below are some probable threats that the child can be exposed to:
- Porn: First in the list is Porn. There are thousands of sites that offer Porn. These sites are easily accessible with just a mouse click.
- Gambling: There are many sites that offer online gambling.
- Drugs: Sites that give information on how to procure and use drugs.
- Violence: These sites promote racial hatred and spread inflammatory messages that incite a tender mind to turn to violence. Some sites provide information to procure or manufacture dangerous weapons.
- Predators: These are depraved and mentally sick people who masquerade as children and well wishers. They try to entice children by promising them goodies.
How your child falls a prey
Each day sees about 10,000 new sites coming up. Majority of them have Pornographic orientation. Harmful content can be accessed in many ways. Your child seeks some of them unwittingly and some reach your child by evil design. Given below are a few ways in which this happens:
Search Engines
Search engines allow you to enter a key word and search for related websites. The results may run into many pages. Results on the first few pages are refined to your query. Later pages display results somewhat related to your original query. These pages may carry harmful or sexual content. For e.g.: Open google and type toons in the search bar. The first page displays genuine stuff. The next few pages start giving links to sexual content. Now what perverted mind thought of the idea of creating toons with a sexual theme is beyond the scope of this white paper. But the stuff is there within easy reach of your child.
1) Many good and innocent words in English have been ‘conferred’ a Sexual status. A child searching for ‘gay summer vacations’ might find some very disgusting content, not related to what it wanted.
2) Special Interest Sites: Your child may be an avid gamer. Many sites offer free downloads of games. A majority of them are genuine and offer freebies, demos, software, etc. all perfectly legitimate. Demos are limited version games and offer only a few levels or options for playing. The child soon masters the demo and wants more. By word of mouth or even through the search engine it comes to know of ‘Cracks’.
Cracks are illegal copies of games and usually stored in Porn sites. While cracks are available to the determined seeker, they ask for your name and other details. Your innocent child may give out its real name and other details. These details may be picked up by perverts who entice the child with inducements.
3) Chat Rooms: While chatting is a good way to make instant friends, it is anonymous. A person who claims to be Anne, aged 8 years from New York, it might very well be Hannibal, aged 60. Such perverts strike a quick rapport with the child and will offer anything the child wants just to make physical contact.
4) Anonymizers: Kids today have become smart. They probably know more about computers than you. Anonymizers provide means to beat some of the common parental control software. These are software applications and sites that remove your systems identifying features when you access web sites. They act like gateways to Porn and other sites. Content from the accessed sites is jumbled and given to you. The normal parental control software cannot filter out such data.
5) Dialers: When pornographic sites are accessed, they try to install a dialer in your machine. If this is allowed, then the dialer uses your modem to make international calls and access ‘premium’ content. Presumably, people hosting the porn site share the money billed during calls with the private telephone service provider. Not only is your child subjected to more abuse, but also your phone bill is massively inflated. These dialers are sometimes hosted by hackers who use the installed dialer to thoroughly survey your machine and steal credit card numbers.
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