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Overview:
Online Safety
See the list below of recommended sites for online safety information.
- Stay Safe Online.org -The National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) builds strong public/private partnerships to create and implement broad-reaching education and awareness efforts to empower users at home, work, and school with the information they need to keep themselves, their organizations, their systems and their sensitive information safe and secure online and encourage a culture of cybersecurity.
- A Platform for Good -Teaching Parents Tech. A Platform for Good is a project of the Family Online Safety Institute designed to help parents, teachers and teens to connect, share and do good online. Google, Facebook and Microsoft collaborated to help launch this resource.
- Common Sense Media -Common Sense Media is a site that is chock full of ratings and reviews of a wide variety of media, including video games, websites, music, movies, and TV shows. Not sure if a particular game, website, movie, etc. is appropriate for your kids? This is a good place to look for information, as well as tips on digital literacy.
- OpenDNS -OpenDNS offers both free and paid solutions for internet filtering and parental controls for your home internet connection. Even if you are not a technology expert, OpenDNS has instructions on how to implement their service in your home. The best part about the OpenDNS service is that it will cover all the devices in your home that are connected to your internet connection.
- MICROSOFT FAMILY SAFETY CENTER -Like Google, Microsoft has assembled a resource that contains general online safety tips with information about specific tools that can be used with Microsoft products. The "Use family safety settings" section is particularly comprehensive in listing how to use the tools within a wide variety of Microsoft products, including XBox, Kinect, and Windows.
- Google Family Safety Center -Google has assembled an excellent resource for parents on general online safety, as well as specific tips for enabling some of the safety tools available within Google products (Search, YouTube, Chat, Google+, etc.) The "Tips from Parents at Google" section contains some terrific short videos showing Google employees talk about how they approach online safety with their own children.
- ESRB Setting Parental Controls -The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) site has a good resource with directions on how to activate and configure parental and content controls on the most popular gaming devices.
- Netsmartz.org -One of the best free resources available for parents, children, teens and educators. A wealth of information to discuss and share as a family. If you have middle school or high school students, make sure to check out the videos section for "Real Life Stories" demonstrating the dangers and consequences of cyber-bullying and "over sharing" of information!
Resources from Apple
While Apple doesn't yet have a "one stop shopping" site listing all their online safety resources and tools, they do have pages that cover individual products. If you have a Mac, an iPhone, iPod, iPad or use iTunes, these pages are very helpful.