Tips for parents to keep children safe online.

For children the internet is a magical entity capable of answering obscure questions, providing printable templates, taking them on a virtual tour of the world, endless interesting videos and so on.

What they are not aware of, is, about viruses, online privacy, phishing, social networking etiquette, and any other internet safety and/or security issue you can think of.

If we are providing the children with the latest facilities it is also our duty as parents to make them aware of the hazards it includes.

Recently there were news of teenagers committing suicide playing a game over internet. Life as such is so precious and that too if it is of young children.

Internet safety, or online safety, is the knowledge of maximizing the user's personal safety against security risks to private information and property associated with using the Internet, and the self-protection from computer crime in general.

Here are some of the greatest risks that kids face online:

11)      Cyberbullying: It is something a lot of children witness and choose to ignore some of them face it themselves. Social media and online games are today's virtual playground, and that is where much cyberbullying takes place. For example, children can be mocked in social media exchanges. Or, in online games, they or their "player characters" can be subjected to incessant attack, turning the game from an imaginative adventure into a humiliating ordeal.

The best way of protecting children against cyberbullying is to be comfortable talking to your children about what is going on in their lives, and how to stand up to bullies.

22)      Cyber predators: These predators lurk on social media and game sites that appeal to children (the same virtual playgrounds where much cyberbullying happens). There, they can exploit not only children's innocence, but also their gift of imagination.

33)      Posting private information: Children do not yet understand social boundaries. They may post personal information online, for example in their social media profiles that should not be out in public. This might be anything from images of awkward personal moments to their home addresses.

            If your children are posting in public view, you can also see it—and there's no harm          in reminding them that if Mom and Dad can see it, so can everyone else. Don't snoop, but talk to your kids about public boundaries.

44)      Phishing: Phishing is what cybersecurity professionals call the use of emails that try to trick people into clicking on malicious links or attachments. ("Hey—thought you might like this!") This can also be done with malicious text messages (then it's called "smishing").

Phishing emails and smishing texts can pop up at any time, but the cybercriminals who devise them keep watch on sites that are popular with children, and gather information such as email addresses and friends' names to use in their scams. Teach your children to avoid clicking on emails or texts from strangers and to be wary of messages that claim to be from their friends but have no genuine personal message attached.

55)      Falling for scams: Children might fall for scams that offer things they may prize, such as free access to online games. Young people are easy marks for scams because they have not yet learned to be wary. As with phishing, cybercriminals can use sites popular with children to identify potential victims, and then promise them something in turn for what they want—like parents' credit card information.

For young or old, the best protection against scams is knowing that if an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't true. Teach your children to not get lured by online offers that promise too much.

66)      Accidentally downloading malware: Malware is computer software that is installed without the knowledge or permission of the victim and performs harmful actions on the computer. This includes stealing personal information from your computer or hijacking it for use in a "botnet," which causes sluggish performance.

As with scams, educating your children is the best protection, but antivirus software and related security protections can help safeguard your child's computer against any malware that sneaks into it.

7)      Posts that come back to haunt a child later in life: The Internet does not have a                                   delete key. Anything your child puts online is nearly impossible to remove later. But teenagers in particular are not thinking about how a future boss—or, one day, a prospective spouse—might respond to "amusing" images or other personal content that they post to their social media profiles or other websites.

           Explain to your teens that they might change how they wish to portray themselves           online—but that the Internet won't let them.

The Internet can pose dangers to children. It can also open doors of wonder for them that previous generations could not even have dreamt of. Help make sure that your children experience the joys of an online world, not its hazards.

By Sonali Bakshi.