Fidelity Offers New Parental Controls Service

[Tami]

Press Release

[url=\"http://www.fidnet.com\"][u]Fidelity[/u][/url] Offers New fidnet Parental Controls Service

With children out of school and spending more time online, Fidelity Communications is preparing to release its newest parental controls service.

Fidnet Parental Controls does just what its name implies: it gives parents control over what content their children view on the Internet, providing a safer online experience. This new tool will be available June 15.

This product will be offered free for 30 days. To sign up, simply watch for the Parental Controls banner at www.fidnet.com. Once the trial period ends, you will be billed $2.99 per month thereafter unless you disconnect service.

“We really believe parents will love this new product so much they won't want to live without it,” said Dee Wickey, Internet product manager.

Believe it or not, the average age of a child's first exposure to online pornography is 11 years old. Many of these children—90 percent of 8- to 16-year-olds—have viewed it while doing homework. And with more than 100,000 pornographic Web sites available at the click of a mouse, it is more important than ever to safeguard the home computer and protect children, Wickey said.

Internet filtering, powered by NetSweeper, gives Parental Controls the ability to scan Web pages in real time. This means that pages will be reviewed within seconds by NetSweeper's Artificial Intelligence engine. Inappropriate sites will be blocked almost immediately. Subscribers will no longer have to submit pages for review and wait as inappropriate content gets through—a defect with other parental control programs.

Instant Messaging blocking also is available with fidnet Parental Controls. Chatting applications like AOL, MSN and Yahoo will be unavailable if you want your children doing homework instead of chatting online with their friends.

Newsgroup blocking is another benefit of Parental Controls. Newsgroups are populated with a vast amount of pornographic postings.

To keep your kids from unwittingly downloading spyware or pornographic content, or illegally downloading music files, use peer-to-peer (P2P) blocking. This stops all file sharing applications, such as Kazaa, eDonkey and BearShare.

There is also a web filtering option, which blocks Internet content based on a certain profile. For example, the Teenager profile is blocked by default for Sex, Online Sales, and Keyword searches. Parents may select content for their children through a Web-based control panel. Options include time-of-day filtering, customizable category selection, and the ability to disable filtering with a username and password.

“Fidnet Parental Controls will give parents the upper hand in keeping unfit material off their computers and away from their children,” Wickey said.