Beware of your kids!

Almost 1 in 5 parents have lost either money or important personal data due to their children unmonitored computer use, according to a 2013 survey carried out by B2B International and Kaspersky Lab.

What exactly are your children up to? The question is more pressing than ever in this age of widespread Internet access via computers, smartphones and tablets. Online there are no borders or boundaries: if you can use a computer you can reach all kinds of sites and our children are often at least as tech-savvy as their parents. However, not everything online is suitable for youngsters, and while the web is a valuable source of education and entertainment it is also home to some alarming threats.

The recent B2B/Kaspersky Lab survey found that globally about 27% of parents feared their children had been at risk on the Internet at least once over the last 12 months. About 11% of that survey reported that children had faced inappropriate content and 7% of respondents had evidence that their offspring had contacts with strangers.

About 10% of respondents reported that their children had accidentally removed important data from their PCs and 5% of children had inadvertently shared this data with others. Similar numbers admitted they had been stung by an unexpected bill for online purchases after children got access to their parents’ accounts in App stores. In total 18% of families reported financial costs or lost data due to their children.

These results show that children and their parents face serious risks on the Internet, and prove that special measures are needed to avoid them.

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Careful control:

Kaspersky Lab’s special Parental Control function, available in Kaspersky Internet Security and Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac provides those special measures. It gives families a user-friendly way of protecting children online. Parental Control was integrated in Kaspersky Lab products with the following specific features:

· Children are curious and sociable, so with Parental Control from Kaspersky Lab you can block websites with inappropriate content and delete them from search results as well as to introducing restrictions on the information which can be posted on social networks and other sites.

· Children need exercise, as well as time in front of the screen, so Parental Control from Kaspersky Lab includes options to restrict computer time.

· Sometimes children do not know when to stop, so Parental Control from Kaspersky Lab puts parents in control of which games their children can play, and when they can play them. Games with age limits, or software with inappropriate themes and content, can be prevented from running at all.

· Sometimes it is hard to judge which content is appropriate for your children, so Parental Control from Kaspersky Lab includes default profiles designed for children of different age groups.

Parents are usually busy at work or at home so they can hardly keep track of everything that their child is doing on the Internet. However, any parent can delegate this task to reliable technology that will protect the child against all Internet threats. Parental Control, incorporated in Kaspersky Internet Security for Windows and Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac, includes the necessary technologies.

Kaspersky Internet Security and Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac are also available as part of Kaspersky Internet Security Multi-Device, a comprehensive security solution developed to protect devices working on different operating systems Windows, OS X and Android.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com

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