How to Protect Kids in Chat Rooms

What is Chat Rooms?

A chat room is a location on the internet which is usually topic driven, where there are people of a certain age or a certain topic that they want to chat about. Anyone can anonymously add a statement to the topic that's going on. So it's sort of like being in a giant room with a conversation going on and anybody who wants to chime in can do it.

About the Dangers of Chat Rooms:

The dangers of chat rooms are all the same as the dangers of actually meeting some stranger or somebody who could be dangerous. You're in contact with people where you really have a huge veil. You don't know whether or not these people that you're chatting with are anything like the people that they say they are. They can say they're a man and they're really a female, they can say they're a kid and they're really an adult. You really don't know who you're chatting with. If it's a personal friend of yours and you're instant messaging talking to him, such as some kid that you know at school, that's okay, depending on what you're chatting about. At least you know who they are. The biggest danger is trying to communicate with people where you don't know who they really are and you don't know their intentions.

News on Chat Room Danger

SurveilStar allows you to block entire categories of websites (such as pornography, gambling sites, time-wasting sites) so that you can control your kid web surfing activity to keep them away from dangers in chat rooms.

Chat Room Danger Warning

Parents are being warned of hidden dangers in internet chat rooms after a teenage girl was duped into meeting a 47-year-old man. The man had introduced himself as a 15-year-old when they first began swapping messages before admitting he was 18. Eventually the 13-year-old girl, who has not been identified, agreed to meet him. But her mother - suspicious of the unknown teenage boy - went with her daughter to the meeting and was horrified to find the young man was in his 40s.

The mother said: "To take this to the worst possible conclusion, we may not still have our daughter now."

"As they were talking I went up to him and said I was her mother, that she was lovely and we love her, and that he must understand that. He said: `Yes'. "

"I said: `You are not 17', and he answered `Yes I am', but then admitted he wasn't, and I took her away immediately."

She said her daughter had been looking forward to her first meeting with her chat room friend and was devastated that he turned out to have been a middle-aged man. Chief Inspector Neville Pinkney, of Milton Keynes Police, said: "This was a most disturbing case, and had it not been for the vigilance of the girl's mother, the 13-year-old could have placed herself at quite considerable risk."

He said the case showed that adults are using the net for sinister reasons and warned parents to be alert to the internet's possible misuse.

The 47-year-old was arrested but released without charge. Officers said there was insufficient evidence to show that an offence had been committed.

During the course of the girl's internet chats with the man his questions became more and more intimate and he asked her to send him pictures of herself.

Chat Rooms Tips for Parents & Kids

A recent survey indicates that 1 in 5 teens have been defrauded in chat rooms and it’s starting to happen at younger ages. Most of 4th-8th grade students have been victims in chat rooms. Here are some tips for parents and kids for keeping away from dangers in chat rooms.

Tips for Parents

• Instruct kids not to give their real name and location, under any circumstances in order to stay safe
• Make it clear your kids are not to meet anyone they talk to online
• Not allow your kids to participate in a private chat
• Not allow your kids to give out their email address to their chat buddies

Tips for Kids

• Never enter into private chats or private chat rooms with people you don’t know.
• Be careful of who you trust or think you know
• Think before you send a message
• Log out. If you, in any way, feel uncomfortable and make sure you tell a parent or adult immediately
• Know how to report any suspicious behavior to your chat room provider and tell your parents
• Learn how to block and/or ignore people
• Learn how to save parts of conversations you may want to show your parents or report to the authorities

Surveilstar - Keeping Chat Room Safety for Kids

Surveilstar Parental Control Software is a versatile Internet filtering and parental control software program, gives you the ability to control and monitor your child's use of the Internet, irrespective of where you are: in the neighboring room, at work, or even on vacation, thus enabling you to protect your kids from danger in chat rooms.

SurveilStar will help you track emails, IM’s, chats, social networking, websites visited, images viewed, etc. SurveilStar is the perfect solution that can be used for filtering web site content and monitoring the web sites your kids are viewing on the Internet.

Through the years, we had to continuously upgrade the power of this software to match the advances in computer technology as well as the newest online interests of our kids. Installing Surveilstar Parental Control Software provides you with the same peace of mind we have when our kids are surfing the Internet.

SurveilStar can do:

1. Real-time monitoring

2. Email Monitoring

3. Instant Message Monitoring

4. Website Visit Monitoring

Surveilstar gives you the ability to control content displayed, block objectionable websites. Powerful features like email filtering, popup blocking and chat room monitoring are among the tools available with today's web filter programs, each designed to protect against and counteract the tactics of aggressive, online porn peddlers and other predators.

With Surveilstar parental control software and proper supervision, parents can keep their kids safe from ever more resourceful and persistent pornography vendors and other online predators. These efforts can help the internet reach its potential as the greatest communications medium ever while avoiding some of its greatest dangers.