AVG Family Safety.

In my letter to my 16 year old self, I should have mentioned a bit about the internet. It was in it's infancy, I was 16 in 1998 when chatrooms were just starting up. I used to go in them regularly and arranged to meet people pretty often. I usually met up with them at football matches. Notably once a man never met me. He had said he was 18 whilst we were talking but when I went to the pub in Portsmouth he wasn't there. However, there were a couple of older men (in their 50s) who insisted on buying us lots of drinks. I am fairly certain now that one of these 50 year old was in fact the 18 year old I had been chatting to online. I also put myself in danger, meeting one person on a street corner, he picked me up in his car and drove off. I didn't know where we were going and I hadn't told anyone I was going out. Luckily all was fine and he was an ok (ish) kind of guy and he listened to me. It could have been so different though.

So much has changed since then, we are far more aware of the potential dangers of your children browsing the internet. Even my son, age three has managed to get to a few random YouTube clips on my phone just by pressing a few different buttons. Your children have access to myriad information on the internet. Some good, some bad. How can you protect them from finding something they should not see, or monitor their chat room use?

This is where AVG come in. They have some Family Safety software which can be used on your computer and accompanied by a free mobile app. The software is there to:

Protect your children from unsuitable websites

Monitor their searches

Be notified of cyber bullying and grooming

It is a fantastic idea and, whilst it seems a bit Big Brother esque, it is surely better to be keeping an eye on what sites your children are visiting and who they are talking to, rather than them getting into danger. The software uses key-stroke technology to monitor your child's activities in chat-rooms and on social networking sites. If it spots words, phrases or language that are known to be used to victimize children online, it will notify you immediately via SMS or email. You can set up different profiles for different children. You can also protect your children when using an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch or a Windows Phone mobile device if you download AVG Family Safety® from the Apple App Store or Windows Phone Marketplace. Then you will have the same level of protection when they are searching and surfing on mobile devices as you do on personal computers. 

I have two AVG Family Safety® licences to give away to a couple of lucky readers. To enter, please fill out the Rafflecopter widget below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway Terms and conditions

The prize draw closes on 13th of August at 12.01am EST

I will send the winners of the licenses a code which they should redeem at vouchers.avg.com

The winner will be chosen at random by Rafflecopter

I will notify the winner within 12 hours of the close of the prize draw.

Disclaimer: I have not been offered anything to write this post but I have been given two codes to give to two lucky readers.