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Controversy: can the net be nannied?
Violence and pornography reside there
By Vidushi Seneviratne and Ruwanthi Herat Gunaratne
The Internet has become a powerful tool in the lives of children and adults alike. It's indispensable. Yet it is the cause for countless disagreements in nearly every household. Parents refuse to allow their kids access unless supervised.

The kids in turn rebel and rush to access the internet as soon as their parents leave the front door.

Most say that the underlying point is that the Internet is not the root of all evil; it merely adds a new dimension to an existing problem.

This is not to suggest that concern over the increase in pornography is entirely misplaced.

Parents must act as their children's guardians and guidelines need to be established for online activities.

Everyone has a method to combat this problem. Some parents simply knock the computer off and ask the kids to stick to either referring up on books in the library (the way they used to do) or accessing only sites that are related to their studies such as information on Napoleon or the Russian Revolution, others rely on the filtering systems available at a cost on the internet itself.

Net Nanny for example is a popular choice. But this too comes with a price tag.

Others such as Cyber Patrol, Cyber sitter and We-Blocker can all be downloaded off the internet in the course of a few minutes.

But how does this system work? Technological fixes involve using computing technology to restrict access to certain internet sites, internet technologies and in some cases remove language deemed inappropriate and restrict access to unsitable internet content.

While such fixes have their advantages, none of the technologies is 100% fullproof, and can lead to a false state of security. The more adventurous child will succeed in going through the toughest barriers to access to which have been denied to them through security measures.

The system usually works by filtering certain keywords, by limiting access to pre-approved sites or by restricting access to pre-determined sites (blocking).

At the same time one must understand that not all children are prone to rebel and access these sites.

The majority are rational enough to understand the harm that they could come to in hacking into unsuitable websites.

Dialog Internet has introduced a new concept. They offer a package that will help parents and pre-teens to reach a consensus in order to provide unsupervised internet access to children.

What is the difference between the Dialog package and the other options already available on the Internet? "We are foolproof," says Mr. Nushad Perera, Head of Sales and Marketing at Dialog GSM.

"We have a monitoring process that takes place on a daily basis. So you can be sure that new unsuitable sites too are not viewed by the children."

But who draws that fine line between what is truly suitable and what is not? "Access to anything bordering on vulgarity would be denied."

But who is the judge and is this effective? For as we found out it's not only porno graphical sites that prove harmful to young minds.

Violence runs in abundance on the Internet. Online strategy games ask Players to formulate plans in order to assassinate each other. There's even a site on "How to make a bomb!" Parents are understandably worried and rush to completely filter all internet sites.

This too poses a problem.

The New York Times in its research found that schoolchildren could view websites opposing issues such as abortion, but were denied access to sites which supported abortion rights.

Both the pros and cons of issues such as this have to be available to children to form a balanced viewpoint.

Whilst the problems are numerous and unending the internet is an integral part of our lives. By completely denying access parents deprive their children of an unexplainable amount of information available on the net.

The other side of the coin is that the internet as we found out is not a safe heaven. Judge for yourself.

Parental guidelines
Know what your kids are doing online. Supervise your children's computer activities, just as you do their television time.

Never give personal information online, such as a home phone number, address, last name, name of school, passwords or credit card info. Your kids would not give their address to a strange person on the home, nor should they divulge it online. Be cautious of online chat rooms. Allow it only with your supervision. Chat rooms are the cyber equivalent of CB Radio.

Users can type to each other in real time, and messages are viewed by everyone in the chat room. Private chat rooms are also available. But the problem lies in the fact that anyone can chat under an assumed name or identity.

Teach your children to come to you if anything ever makes them feel uncomfortable, such as inappropriate questions or an invitation to a private chat room.

Do not respond to offensive mail.

Never allow your children to meet face to face someone they've met online.

Limit online time. Use parental control software as appropriate. Parents routinely lock up household chemicals to protect their toddlers and the internet can also be selectively locked.

Today there are several software packages to keep kids out of adult sites.

How reasonable are these filters?
As part of the science curriculum British school pupils are expected to learn how to access and use data from scientific sources. Reader John Shale tells us he was trying to locate suitable web sites, so he typed in "data analysis" as a search key word, only to be rebuffed by his school's Net Nanny software.

The reason, he had worked out, lies in the first four letters of the second word.

He adds that he long ago gave up trying to access anything containing the word "biology". This word is also a no-no, in case children try to access matters relating to sex education.

Bomb making on the net, cook book style
Wednesday, April 21, 1999: Detectives investigating the Colorado school massacre are trying to determine whether the killers learned how to make bombs from the internet.

One car bomb went off in the parking lot at Columbine High School in the aftermath of the gun chaos.

Another went off in the school and at least 12 others were found in the building.

The discoveries have raised questions not only about the availability of guns to teenagers, but also about how the youngsters could have learned the techniques of creating bombs.

Police who searched the home of one of the dead teenagers - Eric Harris - said they found bomb-making material. Details of how to make a bomb can be found on the Internet.

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