General guidelines for safe internet use.

We recommend that children's home internet access should be in a common or family room, rather than children's bedrooms, at least through middle school. The best safeguard is supervision.

Treat everyone like a stranger
Never give out personal information
Encourage children to talk to an adult about anyone who they have been in contact with online, whether solicited or not.
If someone is bothering them, while chatting or IMing, block that user and report them to the company that runs the service like AOL or MSN.
Don’t contact people you don’t know.

Link to Peter's powerpoint presentaion from RDS Parent University (484 kb, .ppt)

Peter Ferioli's Presentation to RDS Middle School Parents (2.35 Mb, .pdf)

On the Internet, personal information is valuable. Protect it with your life.

Never give out any of the following information:

Full name
Age
Gender
Grade
School
Home address
(even the city you live in)

Pictures of yourself, friends, or family
Email address or IM username
Phone number
Password
Friend’s or family’s information
The fact the child is a child

For adults, also avoid providing:

Social security number
PIN number
Credit Card number

A child’s identity online is important. They should be encouraged to express themselves in the digital world, but they need to remember to protect themselvese. When selecting a username, don’t include any of the following information

First and last name (choose one or the other and stick with it)
Gender
Year of birth
Anything personal

Links with information about keeping yourself and your children safe online, and about software tools you can install to filter or limit your child’s access to the net. No software solution takes the place of active engagement with kids on their use of the Internet. Most can be bypassed by tech-savy teens.

wiredsafety.com
cyberangels.org
blogsafety.com
safeteens.com
protectyourkids.info
NetNanny.com