The Cyber Guardian – Made by parents for parents

Helping parents and protecting kids on-line
 
How do you effectively block ‘bad stuff’ on the internet, protect your children and simultaneously provide a flexible, parent-controlled environment that can’t be circumvented?

This is the conundrum that parents face every day with today’s existing ‘child safe’ Internet filters failing to meet the challenge.

Brisbane-based company The Cyber Guardian has come up with a solution: create a pre-screened universe of websites that have been effectively and thoroughly vetted by the company and use this as the basis for creating a safe on-line environment for children.

The safe websites are constantly updated and they are the only ones accessible by children – unless a parent adds an exception.

Other software tries to filter sites and blacklist them dynamically, but provide less than reliable results because internet nasties pop-up quicker than traditional filters can find them, which leaves huge gaps in their effectiveness as protection for children.

“Filters are just not effective,” said Max Thomas, founder, father and chief executive officer, The Cyber Guardian.

“Most have been around since the early days of the internet and just can’t keep up with the thousands of ‘bad’ sites that are added to the web every day. And the government’s plan to introduce mandatory filtering is a bandaid approach that just won’t work. I actually agree wholeheartedly with Telstra’s Greg Wynn, who recently said trying to filter the internet is like trying to ‘boil the ocean’.”

Security for children on the internet is a growing global problem and one of the most topical issues for governments worldwide.

According to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), one in five children is targeted by a predator or paedophile each year, whilst 30 per cent of teenage girls say they have been sexually harassed in an on-line chat room, but only seven per cent tell their parents for fear of having their on-line access limited.

The Cyber Guardian will not allow online chat or social networking as part of the overall site bank, but parents have the option to add these sites if they decide they are appropriate to the individual child’s account.

“What we’re doing is giving control back to the parents and providing them a safety net at the same time,” added Mr Thomas.

“One of the major problems parents have today is their children are often much more tech savvy than them. Children, especially young teenagers, know how to get around filters and they tell others how to do it. It’s just impossible for parents to keep up.”

For more information go to: www.thecyberguardian.com