UK Safer Internet Centre works with ISPs to help parents understand filtering tools

The UK Safer Internet Centre is pleased to have worked with BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media in helping to highlight the parental control tools that they provide to their customers to help keep their children safe online when accessing the internet via that network.

The four big Internet Service providers (ISPs), BT, Sky, Talk Talk and Virgin, provide free parental controls, and provide new customers with a prompt to decide whether they want to use parental controls or not.

Customers of these ISPs can now watch a short video on the UKSIC site to find out where to access these parental controls, what they do and how to can set them up. See www.saferinternet.org.uk/advice-and-resources/parents-and-carers/parental-controls

In addition, there are parental controls available on a wide range of devices. Whether your child is using a games console, a tablet or a BlackBerry, or using online services such as iPlayer, there are controls available for parents to use, and these are available for free. You can find more information at the UK Safer Internet Centre’s Parents’ Guide to Technology.

The UK Mobile operators also provide free parental controls to help filter out any inappropriate content for children when browsing the web on a mobile. Some set this up by default, but if you are not sure then contact your mobile operator and ask them.

It is important to note that these types of tools are there to help, but they don’t provide a solution to keeping children safe online in themselves. No filtering tool is 100% effective and parental controls work in addition to, not instead of, engagement with children and young people.