Ever wonder how important it is to monitor what kind of content your children surf on the Internet. Consider these statistics.

• A thirteen-year-old girl in the United States chats with a man, eventually runs away from her family, to be rescued days later from the man's home, where she is tied to his bed.
• A fifteen-year-old girl is kidnapped and sexually assaulted after chatting online with a couple in Europe.
• A thirteen-year-old boy engages in sexually explicit online chats with a known pedophile in the United Kingdom.

These are instances where ignorant parents have given their children a free run on computers hooked onto the Internet.

Apart from pornography sites there are specific Internet sites that patronize white supremacy, hatred, violence and terrorism.

In India, such instances have so far not been reported though this does not mean that may not happen or has not already happened.

To safeguard child interests in such a corrupt online environment, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act was brought in, in 2000.

The law regulates the collection, use and disclosure of personally identifiable information from children under 13.

The law apart, parents need to protect their children from potential danger while using e-mail, instant messaging, chat rooms and generally browsing the Internet.

Porn mail appear in our in-boxes without we even asking for it. How can one think that children's e-mail boxes are going to be treated any differently.

The first way to go about stopping unsolicited mail from reaching children is to use the filters that come in-built with Internet browsers like Internet Explorer.

Internet filters cannot monitor but only regulate a child's use of the Internet in a number of ways. Internet filters can permit access only to approved sites, or permit all sites except those on an established list, which can be customised as per list.

Filters also can be used for emails, which curtail the ability of children to send or receive mail from a parent-created list of people, or prevent access to a specified list of addresses.

Filters though are not smart enough and sometimes can become a source of frustration.

But now parents with teens who freely surf the Net are now installing spyware to monitor their children's online behaviour.

Spyware is software that records all the child's e-mail, instant messages, chat-room dialogue and Web sites visited. That information is then e-mailed regularly to an email-ID that you specify.

Monitoring software comes with many different features, depending on your requirement. Typically one is able to retrieve all the e-mail or chat sent and received by the particular computer.

Other software offers snapshot images of the computer screen so you will know exactly what your children are seeing.

You can even have the screen snapshots sent to another computer, so if you're at work you can still see what your kids are doing.

Some programmes send the image at set intervals, others only if certain preset criteria are met. Other great features are junk mail filtering and recording the whole computer session, just like playing a recorded DVD.

One can easily install computer monitoring software on the home computer which will give you the parental control needed to protect your children when they are on the Internet.

Computer monitoring software is completely hidden from your child. The parental controls allow you to determine just how much or how little of the Internet activity you would like to monitor.

You may also completely block specific sites that you deem inappropriate.

Whether one chooses to filter, spy or just watch closely, talk to your children about the dangers they face online. Prepare them for unsolicited porn, predators who pose as friends and harassment.

Most important, keep computers out of kids' rooms and in places where you can easily see the screen.

Finally, establish at least these two unbreakable Internet rules: Never give out personal identifying information online (name, address, phone number, passwords, etc.), and choose safe, not suggestive, screen names and e-mail addresses.

Some popular filters include Cyber Sentinel, Net Nanny and CyberPatrol. Popular spyware products include Spector PRO, eBlaster and IamBigBrother.

A new book by Becky Worley Security Alert: Stories of Real People Protecting Themselves from Identity Theft, Scams, and Viruses (New Riders Publishing, ISBN 0735713529), details very well the dos and don'ts in this regard.