Kaspersky Lab – Today, when a significant part of a child's life involves online activities, parents need to find additional ways to protect and educate their children. 
The new Kaspersky Safe Kids solution, which can be used across multiple platforms, is designed to help parents learn more about their children and take care of not only their real, but also their virtual lives.
According to a survey by Kaspersky Lab and B2B International, more than half of European parents (52%) reported an increase in the number of online threats their children faced, while almost one in three (30%) admitted to being unable to control what their child sees or does online.
Kaspersky Lab experts are confident that protecting children online requires a comprehensive approach:
Parents should talk to their children about Internet safety, teach them rules to stay safe and – of course – use special technological solutions.
“We are pleased to provide a tool that helps avoid unpleasant consequences from a child’s use of the Internet, even if the child knows more about technology than their parents. The Kaspersky Safe Kids solution, developed taking into account children’s behavior, allows children to safely explore cyberspace and expands the boundaries of parental care. Such solutions enable parents to protect their children in a smart way, without hindering their activities and maintaining a dialogue with them,”
said Alexander Erofeev, Chief Marketing Officer of Kaspersky Lab.
Kaspersky Safe Kids is a “freemium” product:
Most of its functionality is offered for free, but there are also some premium features that can be made available for a fee. To use the solution, all you need to do is register on the My Kaspersky portal, create a profile for your child, and download the app for the required platform (or install it on your child’s device from the App Store). The solution is available for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS devices.
The solution is managed (including creating custom rules) through a My Kaspersky account. Rules allow parents to monitor the time their child spends on devices, the apps they install, the websites they visit, their location, and their circle of contacts:
• Device Usage: Children often lose track of time when playing with a device. Safe Kids gives parents the ability to set limits on how long a device can be used or to set specific times on specific days of the week when a child can be online. Time management can be set to block access to the device if the time limit is exceeded (not available for iOS devices), or Safe Kids can notify the child that it is time to stop using the device without blocking access to it.
• Application Usage: Applications can be potentially dangerous (e.g., those containing violent scenes). With Safe Kids, you can limit the applications a child can install or open, both by age and by category (e.g., games, online stores, entertainment, etc.). Parents can also determine how much time a child can spend in a given application. The ability to limit application usage by category is only available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Android devices.
• Internet Activity: To prevent a child from encountering unwanted content on the Internet, the Safe Kids solution provides the ability to filter websites by category. For example, it can filter websites with adult content, obscene language or information about drugs. Also, unwanted websites can be blocked from the search results of popular search engines, such as Google, Yandex, Bing and Yahoo. Depending on the parents' settings, potentially dangerous applications or websites can be blocked immediately. Alternatively, the child can be warned that opening them is not recommended.
• Facebook activity: Parents, through their My Kaspersky account, can see a summary of their children’s Facebook activity, such as changes in the number of friends and posts, so they can immediately spot signs that their child is in trouble.
• Calls and Text Messages: An additional option for devices with Android software is to provide statistics on the contacts from which the child receives calls and SMS messages (in order not to violate privacy, the text of the messages is not displayed). The solution also allows parents to select individual contacts from the settings, which may show suspicious activity. If one of these specific people tries to contact the child, the parent receives a notification.
• Location: This feature allows parents to know where their child is at specific times and create a perimeter where they are expected to be during certain periods of time. If the child leaves the designated area, parents receive a notification. This feature is only available for Android and iOS software, when GPS is active and the device is connected to the Internet.
If a child encounters a threat, one of the adult family members receives an email and/or text message in the form of a notification (if the parental version of Safe Kids is installed on the parent's device). In their My Kaspersky account, parents can also view a summary and detailed statistics about their children's online activity by day, week, or month.
The information obtained from using Safe Kids gives parents the opportunity to talk to their child more specifically, correct possible mistakes or even intervene at the right time, to help and protect children. Kaspersky Lab experts also recommend the following:
• If your child uses multiple devices at the same time, it is best to install a security solution on each of them.
• Even if your child uses the device at home, under your supervision, he may still come into contact with unwanted content. Therefore, it is recommended to install security solutions on these devices as well.
• Explain to your child why you are doing this. Tell him that it is important to you and ask him not to ignore the suggestions of the protection solution.
• Don’t forget about digital threats, such as malware and fake websites. Theft of an online game account or loss of a research paper can cause stress for a child, therefore, online security solutions should be used in conjunction with parental control tools.
More information about the Kaspersky Safe Kids solution is available on the Kaspersky Lab website.
