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Microsoft says its new research reveals that 65 per cent of Australian parents do not take any precautions to protect their children online.
Microsoft says its new research reveals that 65 per cent of Australian parents do not take any precautions to protect their children online.
Microsoft’s “For Safety’s Sake” research, found that while two thirds of Australian parents surveyed are concerned about the safety of their kids online, more than 60 per cent of parents allow their children to surf the net unsupervised and unrestricted at home.
One fifth of all Australian parents surveyed have caught their children looking at unsavoury material online, almost one third have found their children chatting to strangers, 36 per cent have caught their kids downloading software without permission and another 12 per cent have found their children handing over personal details.
Despite two thirds of parents surveyed allowing their children free reign to the web at home, most believe that online danger is more likely to occur at a friend’s house (52 per cent).
Microsoft says its survey revealed that in spite of concerns for online safety we are still not doing enough to educate and help protect our children.
“Don’t be in the dark about your children’s online lives. The Internet opens a new world of information, socialising and entertainment for children – but it also presents new risks – such as online predators, personal information disclosure, exposure to inappropriate content in web sites, messages, file downloads and within games and audio/video multimedia.
For adults, the risks may be controlled by filtering technologies but protecting children while they are using computers can be quite challenging,” said Stuart Strathdee, Chief Security Advisor, Microsoft Australia.
“If your child uses the internet at home you already know how important it is to help protect them from inappropriate content and contact,” said Ben McIntosh, National Business Manager, Computers and Communication at Harvey Norman.
“It’s important that policies set by a parent are enforced without being able to be easily altered by children. The same is true for tampering with activity logging information that may be essential for a parent to have sufficient information to set and maintain effective policies”, he says.
