Monitoring your kids' online activities

CEBU, Philippines - With all of cyberspace's popular social networks, chatrooms and avenues for instant electronic communication, the practical upsides boasted by online monitoring services comes to the aid of today's digitally challenged mamas and papas.

Designed to efficiently keep tabs on what's going on with kids' internet communiqués, interactions and activities, online activity monitors like Safesocial and NetNanny arms parents with an internet "bodyguard" for their children, consistently watching out for danger signs and potential online threats.

From alerting parents on keywords like "suicide" in Facebook posts, to sending out notifications indicating that there are signs of their child being bullied by classmates, parents can take an active role in their children's online and offline activities, keen on being there for them when their presence and involvement is necessary and most needed.

Online Monitoring Services – What they can do for you and your child

Online monitoring services for kids - simply put - are online services designed to help parents gain insight over what their children are up to and what they are experiencing in the internet's side of things.

With most services of its class designed monitor what children are talking about in chatrooms and social network-based conversations, the successful operation of online monitoring services works by keying in on "markers" or "warning signs", alerting and informing parents when they do come up.

Through online social monitoring services, a mother could learn about how her child is constantly thinking about suicide, obsessing about it though "hints" posted in Facebook. A father could also get to learn about a questionable contact whom his daughter regularly chats with in YM, and can readily assess if the said contact is a pedophile or an overzealous suitor.

Chatroom-based financial discussions between classmates can also be readily assessed and noted by parents, as questionable "overnights" can be readily verified, checked and counter checked. Some online monitoring services even go as far as taking note of where a child uploads photos taken with the use of his/her camera or camera-phone, an enhanced service that comes handy when a child gets the idea of sharing compromising photos of himself/herself.

Bottom line, online monitoring services for kids arms parents with a glimpse on how their kids' online lives are fairing, with the proactive capacity to take necessary action when their safety is at risk.

Online Monitoring Services and their availability here

When talking about the availability of online monitoring services, a number of internet service providers here in Cebu offer internet-plus packages which include options for enhanced internet security.

Online monitoring services are among the many security options offered in these packages, with their payment fees already inclusive of an online monitoring service's ascribed subscription fee. Look into the extended security service options featured by your ISP.

For a "preview" on how an online monitoring service can work for you and your household, there are a number of free online monitoring services available, though these are typically limited in their monitoring capacities.

imsafer (www.imsafer.com) would be one good example, with its Basic version coming with support for chat service providers like Windows Live Messenger/MSN, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, AOL Messenger, IRC and ICQ.

Parents, with imsafer Basic, can receive email alerts should something in a kid's chats be off, as upgrading to the subscription-based imsafer Plus includes support for Facebook posts monitoring, along with monitoring features of Meebo-based activities and more.