The Internet is a revolutionary technology that has transformed the way people live, work, and play. While empowering, such a powerful tool can also be dangerous, especially to children.

The BT Safe Surfing guide can help you make informed decisions about how your family uses the Internet.

The guide covers such important issues as the privacy of your personal information, the security of your home PC, and the safety of your children when online.

Help ensure that the Internet users in your family have educational, entertaining, and safe experiences online with the BT Safe Surfing guide.

The Internet can be a fantastic tool to help children grow. Kids can learn, play, and even socialise online. At the same time, parents need to be aware of not only the benefits of the Internet, but also of the potential dangers it poses to children’s safety.

Become familiar with the following tips and advice. With your careful supervision, your kids can enjoy the benefits of the Internet safely.

Download the Make IT Secure booklet here.

One of the most effective ways to ensure that your children use the Internet safely is to become familiar with it yourself.

Spend some time online. Find out what sites your child wants to visit, and visit them first, to ensure the content is appropriate. Learn the difference between email, instant messaging, and chat. The more you know, the better you’ll be able to ensure your child is safely using the Internet.

A few basic rules can help:

Limit access to the Internet to certain times when you’re available to give guidance

• Keep the computer in a busy part of the house (for example: kitchen, living room)
• Require children to ask permission before they log on
• Let the child lead, but stay with him/her until you’re satisfied that the activity is appropriate
• Advise on what to do in the event of a child receiving unwanted messages. For example: Leave the site, log off, and tell a trusted adult
• Encourage the child to report received messages that they feel disturbed or uncomfortable about, and remind them not to respond to them
• Without scaring them, make it clear that arranging to meet someone they have met on the Internet in never okay
• Check the record of accessed sites in your browser log or history folder from time to time.

CyberPatrol helps protect against the dangers children face online from harmful website content, and can safeguard them against inappropriate language in chat sessions as well as protect them from divulging personal information online.
Click here for Free trial.

Ireland Online Users Save over 30%
IOL (Ireland Online) users can get a 12 month subscription of CyberPatrol at an incredible deal of just €26.27 (inc.VAT)* including free upgrades, as well as free fax and email support. You can also try it before you buy – with a free no obligation 14-day trial.

*Normal Annual Subscription: €37.54 (incl. VAT)

How It Works
CyberPatrol parental control software is specifically designed to work on stand-alone Microsoft® Windows® based PCs at either the desktop or laptop level. It lets you manage and control children's access to the Internet as well as limit or prevent their access to programs, such as games or home finance packages located on your PC.

Who's Using It
Parents, schools and libraries worldwide have come to rely upon and trust CyberPatrol as the most effective tool to help protect children on the Internet. Recommended regularly by parent and computer magazines, it's regarded as easy to use, yet technically sophisticated and fully customizable to each child, according to their age, needs, and interests. CyberPatrol is recognized as the most family-friendly parental control software in the market today.

What You Can Expect
Whether you are an inexperienced user seeking an out-of-the-box solution with factory-set filtering, or a power user looking to customize the Internet access of each family member, CyberPatrol's powerful parental control software caters for you. It gives you the choice to manage when, where, how and to whom access is allowed, filtered, or blocked, as well as:

• Block harmful websites and newsgroups
• Restrict chat and instant messaging
• Filter web based email
• Manage time online and access to programs
• Control program downloads
• Protect personal identity

Irish Internet Service Providers are working together to stamp out child pornography on the Internet. The Internet Service Providers Association of Ireland (www.ispai.ie) has introduced a hotline service to combat this problem.

Parents or guardians who have concerns about unsuitable content should contact the National Hotline at www.hotline.ie immediately. This hotline has been specifically set up to combat child pornography on the Internet.

You can telephone the hotline 24 hours a day on 1890 610 710 or email report@hotline.ie.

Parents should always ensure that a child's use of the Internet is safe. While you're at it, make sure it's educational and fun, too.

The following sites are just a few of the many kid friendly sites available online. Happy surfing.

www.yahooligans.com — A web portal designed especially for kids. The site features a search engine, plus tons of cool content, including news, games, jokes, music, and more.

www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc — Kids can go backstage to catch up with their favourite television characters, play stylist to the CBBC stars, download cool screensavers, and other fun stuff.

www.howstuffworks.com— Ever wonder how a rainbow, zipper, or iPod works? This unique site explains the phenomena of everyday life in engaging, easy-to-understand terms.

www.dublinzoo.ie — Creatures great and small recommend this site to homo sapiens planning to visit the Dublin Zoo. Get opening times, fun animal facts, and find out what it takes to be a zookeeper.

www.coolquiz.com — Keep the space between your ears in tip-top shape with an assortment of mind bending, brain busting trivia, puzzles, and games.

Receiving spam email is an annoying, time-consuming, and even costly problem for Internet users. If you are receiving spam email, there are a few steps you can take to avoid attracting similar email in the future. Unfortunately, none of these methods can guarantee success, but, they’re worth a try.

Some apparently unsolicited email is, in fact, email people agreed to receive when they registered with a site. You may have checked a box agreeing to receive postings about particular products or interests. This is known as opt-in email or permission-based email. You can limit the amount of this type of email you receive by being careful about who you give your email address to, and what you are agreeing to when filling in forms online.

If you do find that you receive this sort of email, you can request that your email address is removed from the mailing list by following the instructions to unsubscribe that are given in the email.

If you are receiving unsolicited email that is not from an opt-in mailing list, the first step is to determine where the email came from, and then take appropriate action.

The Internet is a vast network of inter-connected computers. One benefit is that these computers can quickly and easily share information with each other, as with sending email, downloading web pages, and so on.

Unfortunately, not everyone uses the Internet in a positive way. Some computer programmers called “hackers” create malicious computer code known as “viruses”. A computer virus can spread across the Internet with the purpose of damaging computer hardware, software, and data.

You can protect your computer from hackers and viruses by taking some basic precautions outlined here.

Download the Make IT Secure booklet here.

A computer virus is a program that invades your computer system, hides there, and makes copies of itself. Viruses spread when you launch an infected application or start up your computer from a disk that has infected system files.

Viruses behave in different ways. Some viruses stay active in memory until you turn off your computer. Other viruses stay active only as long as the infected application is running. Turning off your computer or exiting the application removes the virus from memory, but does not remove the virus from the infected file or disk.

Some viruses are programmed specifically to damage the data on your computer by corrupting programs, deleting files, or erasing your entire hard disk.

All computer viruses are manmade. A simple virus that can copy itself over and over again is relatively easy to produce. Even such a simple virus is dangerous because it will quickly use all available memory and bring the system to a halt.

'Trojan programs' are not viruses, but these self-executing files can only be installed with the users agreement and most often the user doesn't realise they installed the program.

Trojans can be set to dial international numbers with huge charges and may never time-out.

What you can do to protect yourself:

• Regular updating of your dialler and browser
• Monitor phone bills – report charges to your ISP and they can re-connect you
• Never accept a 'special viewer', 'personal' dial-up service, or 'free' content scams
• Monitor dial-up settings to look for long numbers and international prefixes
• Be wary of auto-connect options in your browser settings. Preferably click a 'connect' or 'accept' button in your dialler before connecting
• Ensure you select a reasonable 'inactive' time-out period in your dialler settings, e.g., 15 minutes
• Check all CDs in magazines and new PCs to ensure they are local operators. Even Microsoft and AOL can be responsible for distribution of international diallers.

A firewall is a software program or piece of hardware that prevents unauthorized Internet traffic from entering or leaving your computer. A firewall helps make you invisible on the Internet and blocks all communications from unauthorized sources. The best way to ensure protection is to use both a firewall and anti-virus software.

Firewall software packages range from personal firewalls to firewalls for large corporations and come with different levels of features, protection capabilities, and costs. It’s the most effective defence against hackers, thieves, and other intruders. Make sure to research a variety of products to find the firewall package that best fits your needs.

Your operating system is often a prime target for the hackers who spread computer viruses across the Internet.

Software companies are continuously working to ensure that their operating systems are secure from attack from these viruses. These companies periodically release “patches,” which address possible vulnerabilities of an operating system to the latest viruses.

It’s a good idea to install these patches as they become available. If you are a Microsoft Windows user, consider using the Windows Update feature, which will automatically notify you when new patches are available for download. Similar features are available on other operating systems like Macintosh and Linux.

There are a number of scams on the Internet that customers should be aware of. Some of which can result in large telephone bills. “Modem Hi-Jacking” or “Mini -Diallers” are the terms used to describe one such scam.

Modem Hi-Jacking occurs when a website you are visiting purposely disconnects you from your chosen Internet Service Provider and reconnects you to the Internet through an international or premium rate number. These websites will usually provide premium content such as pornographic material, shareware, music, children’s games, ring tones and movie clips.

When the website is accessed, a large number of pop-up windows will appear. You may be asked to install some software or accept the Terms & Conditions of the site, to facilitate the downloading of that content. This process may install a dialler on your computer that will replace your default Internet connection with one that dials a premium rate telephone number or an international telephone number, which can be charged at up to €5.00 per min. There will be a prompt for you to accept the changes. However, this may not always be clear, as it may be in small print amongst other information on the website.

The owners of these sites may have the dialler software integrated into their web page code to automatically download and install onto a user’s computer. The idea behind these programs is that the people who produce them are able to generate revenue from users who dial into the number installed from the web page.

If you are a broadband user you will not be affected by this, as long as you have disconnected the internal dial-up modem from your phone socket and don't use this modem to make fax or voice calls.

Tips:

• Avoid going to sites of questionable content
• If you accidentally stumble onto one of these sites, close down any pop-up windows that open
• Users should not download and/or install any software from sites where there are large volumes of pop-up windows. Read everything before clicking OK, especially when you are going to download something
• Ensure the computer is configured to reject Active X Scripts. Ensure that the browser on your computer is left at the default security setting
• Keep your operating system patched with the latest upgrades from your software's manufacturer. For further help with this contact your operating system's manufacturer
• Call your telephone service provider (not your ISP) and bar international and premium rate calls on the telephone line used to connect to the Internet
• Turn off your computer and modem when not in use
• Do not delete data from your browser's history files, so that you can trace back problems if necessary
• Make sure you can hear your modem. Some people have a volume control on their modem and have it turned down - and so cannot hear it re-dialling
• Be aware of the icons on your desktop and ensure that no new icons have appeared that you have not installed or downloaded
• Review your network and dial-up connections and remove any connections that you are not familiar with, and verify the phone numbers that are being dialled
• Check your telephone bill frequently

For more information on Modem Protection, please go to this url - http://www.btireland.ie/modemprotection.

The Internet continues to play an increasingly positive role in our business and personal lives - which is why it's so important to be aware of the risks. Click here to read more.