Safe surfing on the highway

S. MOHAN RAJ, Chennai

A12-year-old girl from Chennai meets another 12-year-old girl from Pune on an internet chat site. They meet frequently on the chat site and their friendship grows. They send e-mail to each other. The girl from Pune says her parents work for a software firm and it involves frequent travel, both in India and abroad. Her younger brother, nine years old, is very naughty and threatens to bring a cat to eat the mouse on her desktop. The girl from Chennai is thrilled to discover that she and her internet friend share common interests. Both of them have learned carnatic music, play table tennis for their schools, like Shah Rukh and A. R. Rehman, relish rasamalai and aspire to become pilots.

One year after they first met, the Chennai girl receives an e- mail from her friend, informing her that she is in Chennai. She has accompanied her parents on their official trip.

The trip was scheduled on short notice and so she could not write earlier. They would be in Chennai only for a day and it would be great if they could meet at the hotel where she is staying with her parents. The Chennai girl has no time to check with her parents who are at work. She goes to the particular hotel on her own and returns after living through a nightmare. The 12-year-old Pune girl turned out to be a 35-year-old Chennai man with no name.

Stories such as this have been appearing as news stories in the U.S. media with increasing frequency. In less than three years, after being opened up for public use in India the Internet has seeped into every aspect of our life.

There is an online equivalent of almost anything. Initially, there were e-mail, newspapers, e-zines and chat. Gradually, online bookshops, supermarkets, colleges, radiostations and banks made their appearance.

Risks faced by children

* Exposure to inappropriate material which could be sexually explicit, violent or discriminatory:

Two teenagers from Columbine High School, at Denver, Colorado, U.S. walked into their school and shot down their schoolmates before killing themselves last year. Investigations revealed that they had learned to make pipe bombs from the Net.

* Harassment through e-mail or bulletin board posting:

Teenagers report that have received abusive messages and obscene photo attachments in their mailboxes. In the post Denver period, threats to specific schoolmates were posted on bulletin boards or websites.

* Molestation:

* Addiction to internet:

How can parents ensure safe surfing?

Guidelines for Online safety-for parents

*Most real life parenting guidelines would be applicable to the net too. Encourage children to tell you if they experience anything unpleasant or threatening while online.

* Learn to use the internet and its various applications.

* For younger children, it is advisable that parents surf along with them, or at least be at hand.

* For older children, parents can discuss with them about what they did online, the sites visited, the people they met, etc.

* Impress upon children that they must not give out personal information to others on the net, especially in a public place like a chat room, where many people can view what is being typed. Information that should be avoided: telephone numbers, residential address, school details and family details. Most important, children should never give out the 'log in' password to anybody. No service provider (Eg: VSNL, Satyam or eth) will ask for your password. E-mail or phone calls claiming to be from the service provider and asking for passwords are hoax. Recently, many Satyam account holders received a hoax message asking them to give their user name and password. If the child had mistakenly given the password, change the password at the earliest.

* Ask your children to check with you before filling up online proformas asking for personal information. Most sites ask for personal information if you want to register. Look at the site, its relevance, appropriateness and security aspects. See whether there are any additional advantages or registering compared to visiting the site without registering.

* If the child receives a threatening or abusive e-mail, it is best not to reply. If such mail persists, bring it to the notice of your internet service provider. Consider changing the e-mail ID. In extreme cases, where the threat seems to be real and the harassment is severe, you must consider involving the police.

* Be concerned about online friends.

* On the internet, people may not be what they claim to be. This possibility should be explained to children.

* Your child should not fix up a real life meeting with an online friend, without checking with you. As and when a meeting is fixed, schedule the first one at a public place and make sure you accompany your child.

* Computers are fast replacing the television as electronic babysitters. Try to avoid this. Spend time with your children. Make surfing the Net a family activity. Place the computer in a common area, not the child's bedroom.

* Consider using filtering software which would block access to sites, based on key words.

* Avoid snooping. It is possible to monitor the sites visited by your child or even read their web based email (Eg: Hotmail) without their password, by changing certain settings. Instead, develop a confiding relationship. Teenagers resent being snooped on and would stop using internet at home. They can always log on from a browsing centre.

* Keep in touch with online safety websites. For more safety issues/guidelines, visit the following sites for starters.

www.getnetwise.org

www.missingkids.org

* If you are setting up your own website, avoid including photographs of your children and personal details. Most personal websites give away so many family details.

Before including a photograph or some information about the family ask yourself whether you would be comfortable publishing the same in a newspaper.

Role of Browsing centres

A child could access the internet from any of the following: (1) home (2) school library (3) browsing centres. In India most children and teenagers are able to access the Net only from the browsing centres. Browsing centres make internet access affordable to all. But, what is alarming is the lack of concern for child safety issues.

Speaking to owners/ managers of browsing centres it was found that

- Most centres discourage customers from visiting pornographic sites in their open monitors, which is objectionable to other surfers. But they do not interfere with the same in "private seats" (enclosed chambers where the monitor is not visible to others).

- Children get the same privileges as adults in being allotted a private seat.

- If a child is found looking into pornographic sites, they prefer to ignore it. No suggestion is given as they had "no locus standi to advice".

The Internet is no more a hot new technology. It is part of your world. Already, the word 'mail' means only one thing - e-mail. The other variety, which you drop into nice red boxes (rather infrequently now) is called "snail mail", to be specific.

Your children will have to cruise down the so-called information superhighway, in order to keep in touch with reality. Being aware of online safety issues and practising some safety guidelines will make your child's journey on the information highway accident free and worthwhile.

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