The Benefits of Installing a Good Parental Control Software

They say parenting adolescents is mostly about retaining a tenuous balance between being aware of what your kid is up to and giving him or her a fair amount of privacy and independence. Since the Internet age is very much here, conducting a discreet form of surveillance on your kid's activities should be much easier.

However, as the Internet evolved to become increasingly complex and all-encompassing, so did its user's abilities to conceal a great deal of their activities online. Kids and teenagers have become particularly adept at getting around websites with restricted content while hiding the said activity from their parents in the process.

So, with all the assorted toxic content floating around on the Internet just waiting for kids to seek them out or stumble upon them, how can a parent protect his or her children when they won't always be around (or when kids choose to hide their online activities)? 

The answer possibly lies in the installation of a good parental control software.  One type of parental control software is known as keylogger. One of the benefits of such software is that it provides concerned parents is that it can be installed remotely and that it is generally undetectable once in place. The kid would know that such a software is in place, of course, but they would not know when it is functioning. (This then serves as an additional deterrent against visiting websites with inappropriate content or engaging in cyber bullying.)

Some of the other crucial benefits that a good keylogger can provide also include the following:

1. Keystroke logging. Some of the best keylogger software out there can even track your child's keystrokes and show you the sort of keywords or text that commonly pop up when your kid uses the Internet. If some of their keyword searches also turn out to be particularly suspicious, the program can track that too and give you a heads-up.
2. Screenshots. A lot of busy parents often don't have the time to check in with the program as much as they would like. Fortunately, they can set their parental control program of choice to take and keep screenshots of their child's online activity so that they can peruse them when they are ready.
3. Some keyloggers also automatically generate reports so that parents can get timely updates on their child's online activities even when they are away from home for long periods of time.
4. Recording of chat transcripts or emails. Perhaps the scariest thing about cyber bullying is that it often goes undetected until it's too late. This is because a great deal of the bullying occurs behind computer screens, where insults are lobbied behind the safety that distance and anonymous usernames provide. Parental control programs can help nip things in the bud since it picks up on suspicious chat transcripts or email exchanges and keeps a record of them. That way, it can be easier for a parent to notice any disturbing patterns of behavior being made towards their kids. Another advantage is that the records can also stand as proof in case the parent might need to take further action against the bully.
   
   See related posts:  Stop!T! - Stop Cyber Bullying in its Tracks at Your School

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Bruce holds a degree in Computer Science from Temple University, a Graduate Certificate in Biblical History from Liberty University and is working towards a Masters Degree in American History at American Public University.  He has worked in educational and technology for over 18 years, specializes in building infrastructures for schools that work to support the mission of technology in education in the classroom.  He also has served as a classroom teacher in Computer Science, History and English classes.  

Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel -- with a new book, Learn the Basics: Digital Forensics, due soon. 

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