At Google, we're committed to helping keep our Australian users safe and secure online.
When it comes to child safety, we aim to:
- Empower parents with tools to help them choose what content their children see online;
- Educate children and parents on how to stay safe online;
- Protect children by working with law enforcement and industry.
Safety Tools
Many users prefer not to have adult sites included in their search results (especially if their kids use the same computer). Google's SafeSearch screens for sites that contain this type of information and eliminates them from search results. While no filter is 100% accurate, Google's filter uses advanced technology to check keywords, phrases, and URLs. You can modify your computer's SafeSearch settings by clicking on the Preferences link to the right of the Google search box.
Safety Tips
These Internet safety tips can help keep you and your family safe online.
- Keep computers in a central place. It makes it easier for you to keep an eye on your children’s activities.
- Know where your kids go online. If you have young children, you may want to navigate the Internet with them. For older kids, agree on where they can and can't go before they log on. You can also check where your kids have been by looking at the browser history in your computer's web browser menu. Another option is to use filtering products, like Google’s SafeSearch.
- Teach Internet Safety. It's impossible to monitor your kids' online activity, all the time. As kids get older, they need to know how to use the Internet safely and responsibly when they're on their own.
- Use sharing controls. Many sites that feature user-generated content, including YouTube, Google's Blogger site and our photo-sharing site Picasa, have sharing controls that put users in charge of who sees personal blogs, photos, videos and profiles. Using sharing controls is particularly important when you or your kids share personal information, like names, addresses or phone numbers, on public sites. In addition to teaching your kids how to use these controls, teach them to respect the privacy of friends and family by not identifying people by name in public profiles and pictures.
- Protect passwords. It sounds obvious, but remind your kids not to give out their online passwords and not to click on "remember me" settings on public computers, like at school or at the library.
- Beware of stranger danger. Teach kids to avoid in-person meetings with people they "meet" online, and not to share personal information with online strangers because people may not be who they claim to be.
- Teach kids to communicate responsibly. A good rule of thumb is: if you wouldn't say it to someone's face, don't text it, email it, instant message it, or post it as a comment on someone's page. Many of today's most popular websites have easy-to-use tools that let users flag inappropriate content that others post online. It's important for kids to know how to flag inappropriate content when they encounter it.
- View all content critically. Just because you see it online, doesn't mean it's true. Teach kids how to distinguish reliable sources from unreliable ones and how to verify information they find online. And make sure kids understand that cutting and pasting content right from a website may be plagiarism, and plagiarism is cheating.
Security tools
Google has a large number of initiatives to help keep you and your computer secure.
- In conjunction with Stop Badware.org, we place warnings in our search results for websites that our testing has determined to host or distribute badware. If you search for a site that Google has determined to be potentially dangerous, you will see a warning in the search results.
- We offer all New Zealanders a free collection of software (Google Pack), which contains third party antivirus tools, to detect and remove viruses, worms, spyware, adware, trojans and keyloggers.
- Our Gmail users enjoy sophisticated anti-virus scanning, as well as our well-recognised and innovative spam filters and anti-phishing measures.
Security tips
The online environment is constantly changing so make sure you’re keeping up to date—with your software, your passwords and the latest risks. Follow these simple steps.
- Install, update and use your security software on your PC.
- Use strong passwords and change them regularly (see the Official Google Blog for more info).
- Use common sense when sharing personal information online.
- Think before you click on email offers — if it looks too good to be true it probably is!
- Be smart and stay informed.
