Talking Hands Award-Family Safe

Family Safe

Child or family safe - fact or myth?

It is foolish for a user to rely on filtering software as his sole means of monitoring usage and preventing abuse. Your school or family should have a comprehensive internet safety policy, which includes all available techniques.

Within that larger picture, filtering software can play a useful role. Also Safe Surf and other similar organizations provide a detailed rating system which can be tailored to specific needs too. Another excellent resource is The United Federation of Child Safe Web Sites (U.F.C.W.S.).

We've gone into this detail here simply to make the case that privacy on the internet is a myth. The user's actions are observable and traceable. This knowledge should serve as a powerful deterrent to those who have difficulty overcoming the temptations that the net places before them. In addition, most of the "free rating" systems are voluntary, based upon information the applicant furnishes, but are reviewed by the rating group.

A comprehensive guide to rating systems may be found at the adventures of Cyber Bee..

Talking Hands Award Guidelines and Application

Child safety is a major concern of all formalized web site award programs. Every effort is made to insure a family safe environment should a nominated web site finally be honored by our judges. The following steps are taken consistently and uniformly.

If a child rating label or badge is present we will determine its accuracy and compliance with the rating group and will not merely rely upon a label, badge or statement.
If there are instances of questionable child content they will be addressed on a case by case basis. In our determination if material is not child safe, we will request that the web site author clearly identify entrance into those areas as adult content, not suitable for children, or only with parental supervision, or password protect entrance. Such instances would be very minor and certainly not a significant portion of teaching and learning.
Should the honoree contain questionable child safe material it will be clearly stated in our laudations.
A privacy statement is an integral part of child safety and should be very clear as to what information is collected and its disposition.

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Scope of a Privacy Statement

A privacy statement may also be referred to as terms of use (TOU) or terms of service (TOS) too. If you do not know that data is collected by your website. The following information will be helpful.

Referrer Definition: The URL of the Web page a request is coming from. When you click on a link to go to another page, or when the Web page itself calls for an image to be displayed, the browser sends the URL of the current Web page along with the request. Blocking referrer details preserves the user's privacy by not disclosing to a third party the other sites the user frequents. If the referrer details are blocked, the processing page is unable to complete the redirection and the website may not perform as expected. So fully disclose any referrer URL's which are within your web site.

Cookie Definition: A cookie can be used for authenticating, session tracking (state maintenance), and remembering specific information about users, such as site preferences or the contents of their electronic shopping carts. Most modern browsers allow users to decide whether to accept cookies, and the time frame to keep them, but rejecting cookies makes some websites unusable. If you collect cookies, then educate your visitors.

Third Party Resources Definition: Third-party cookies are created by a Web site other than the one you are currently visiting; for example, by a third-party advertiser on that site; a guest book; visitor counter; affiliate marketing; e-mail, and website syndication are a few examples. In other words someone other than the principles (web site owner and host) involved. Full disclosure not only for our children and ordinary world wide web participants is critical in developing a privacy statement.

Web Server Logs Definition: Website server logs vary to a large degree. What information is captured such as traffic patterns, country, domain name entry and exit, browser used, required authentication protocols and errors too. The downside is some sites do install spy ware or combine server log information with other databases, which reveal more information about you than you might be aware. The best defense is to be vigilant about spy ware and always read End User License Agreements (EULA) and Privacy Policies. Just another reason for a privacy statement. In which you control the downside-combining with other databases.