The CIA is committed to keeping children safe on the Internet. We encourage parents and teachers to be involved in children’s Internet explorations and offer the following tips:

• Tell your children to never give out personal information (e.g., their name, home address, school name, or telephone number) in a chat room, on online bulletin boards, or to online pen pals that you have never actually met.
• Explain to your children that the Internet provides anonymity and allows people to misrepresent themselves. Tell your children never to set up a meeting with someone without your permission.
• Encourage your children to alert you if anyone has made them feel uncomfortable or frightened in online correspondence. Discourage them from sending a personal picture to anyone without your permission.

Additional suggestions to help your children stay safe on the Internet are listed below:

• Instruct your children to create hard-to-guess passwords at least eight characters long, using both letters and numbers.
• Update anti-virus software regularly, and install firewall software or hardware, particularly for high-speed use.
• Make sure you or your children never open any attachments from senders you don’t know.
• Have your children alert you when something bad happens, and also notify your Internet service provider or software vendor, if necessary.
• Surf the Internet with your children at times and talk to them about the sites they visit.
• Review the privacy policy of Web sites your children regularly use and discuss with them the information the sites collect about them. Remember, if a site has information about you or your children that you don’t want them to have, you can ask the Web site to delete the information.

Information about our Web site privacy and security policies are available online.