Keeping Your Children Safe Online

Written by Sharon Housley


Tips for Keeping Your Children Safe Online

By Sharon Housley

Parents are constantly struggling with ways to keep their children safe online. The Internet has a global reach and at this point no bounds, or limitations. Outside of installing filtering software children should be educated in order to protect themselves to this virtual monster. We've put together a collection of ten tips that should be observed while surfing online. Atrepparttar very least these tips will prompt family discussions regarding safety.

1.) When onrepparttar 133523 internet personal information should be kept private. Just because someone asks doesn't mean you need to tell them. When someone asks for personal information, consider how they might use that information and whether it is necessary for them to have it.

2.) If you are conversing with someone online, don't assume that they are being honest with you. Just because they say they're 16 doesn't mean they are.

3.) Do not release your password to anyone, even if they say they are from your online provider.

4.) Overall it is best not to respond to unsolicited e-mail (SPAM), if there is something flagrant or inappropriate inrepparttar 133524 e-mail, consider reportingrepparttar 133525 sender to their Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Why WAP isn't - as bad as people say

Written by Mike Street


It's unlucky thatrepparttar acronym for Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) has such an unfortunate rhyme! Even more unlucky for WAP, it burst ontorepparttar 133522 mobile communication scene with lavish promises fromrepparttar 133523 Mobile Operators (you know who you are) of 'The Internet on your Mobile' and 'Takerepparttar 133524 Internet with you'.

That really was a load of WAP.

So, a few years on we can ask, like Frankie Goes to Hollywood, 'WAP, what is it good for'?

More than you might think, givenrepparttar 133525 current deafening silence from those same Mobile Operators.

The rise (and rise) of SMS is instructive. This has gone from nowhere to everywhere with practically no promotion fromrepparttar 133526 networks. Type SMS into Google and you get 52 million hits! In China in 2003, 220 Billion SMS messages were sent. During 2003 inrepparttar 133527 UK alone, 30 Billion were sent, which equates to 500 for every man, woman and child inrepparttar 133528 entire country! What is going on here?

Well SMS is cheap, not cheap enough perhaps but, up until a couple of years ago, much cheaper than calling. So it was a viable alternative to making a mobile phone call, everyone could send and receive them, and it didn't matter what handset you used or what network you were on (or even which country you were in).

Muchrepparttar 133529 same is true of WAP. Most handsets sold this century in GSM markets are compatible. Costs, especially using GPRS, are very low, as long asrepparttar 133530 information is optimised forrepparttar 133531 handset. Actually, it costs less to read your email with GPRS than to send an SMS. How times change!

And people are using it, too. Inrepparttar 133532 UK in December 2003,repparttar 133533 number of WAP pages viewed was over 1 billion forrepparttar 133534 first time. The Mobile Data Association (MDA) forecasts 13 billion for 2004 as a whole, up from 9.2 billion in 2003 (against an original MDA forecast for 2003 of 8 billion).

All this is inrepparttar 133535 face of complete indifference, if not outright hostility, fromrepparttar 133536 networks. The problem for them is that, as mentioned, WAP is cheap. You can get allrepparttar 133537 mobile email you need via WAP to your handset for around one tenth ofrepparttar 133538 cost of a RIM Blackberry data subscription. And please don't ask how muchrepparttar 133539 running costs are of a laptop mobile data card! A while ago, one of my colleagues used more data in a month thanrepparttar 133540 cost ofrepparttar 133541 mobile data card itself. Since thenrepparttar 133542 networks have introduced more reasonable price bands, but he now gets allrepparttar 133543 email he needs on his cellular phone via WAP for one hundredthrepparttar 133544 amount spent during those expensive 30 days. And he doesn't need to carry a laptop around with him, wait for it boot, wait again for it to downloadrepparttar 133545 mail, and balance it on one hand whilst holding his coffee withrepparttar 133546 other and his mobile phone in a third!

Cont'd on page 2 ==>
 
ImproveHomeLife.com © 2005
Terms of Use