Kid-safe surfing
- — 07 September, 1999 21:49
Are you worried about what your kids could see on the Internet? If so, it's probably best left to you to take measures to monitor their Net usage and encourage them to visit kid-safe Web sites.
Zeeks (http://www.zeeks.com), a US Web site developed by a company that publishes educational software programs, is one of those. Zeeks offers Shockwave games, adult-monitored chat, e-mail and personal calendars to kids who register with this free service.
Zeeks does not ask for real names (in fact it cautions kids against giving away any personal information such as name, address and school to anyone on the Net). The log-in process has been simplified so that users can remember their password - at registration the child can create a "Zeek-ret", choosing a head, body and tail from a range of animals, a clever application of Shockwave. At log-in the user enters their nickname and simply clicks on each body part until the right parts appear.
An additional offering on the site is ZeekSafe, a free 2.44MB Internet filtering program that integrates with Internet Explorer to filter out more than 100,000 inappropriate sites, the company says.
