The internet has become a crucial part of everyone’s life, at the same time, people who are not technologically literate have found it hard to adapt to the changes that occurred due to the COVID 19 pandemic, which led everyone to get familiar with the different types of technology and use it to perform their daily tasks, work remotely, and read the pandemic news. A similar change has also affected our children as they too needed to get familiar with the online lifestyle to take classes, hand in assignments, and do tests.
However, getting everything done online can put our privacy at considerable risk and increase the possible threats our children might come across accidentally.
Besides many other threats, the deep web is a worrying part of the internet which your child should never deal with or access its content.
Before we let you know how to make sure a child won’t find a way to the deep web, let’s tell you first what the deep web is.
It might surprise you that what you access on a traditional search engine, such as Google Chrome, Firefox, or Internet Explorer, represents less than 5% of the web content. The rest, 95%, is hidden content under the surface, where the dark and deep web are placed.
What Is the Deep Web?
The dark web is the largest portion of data on the internet; it’s not as serious and scary as some people picture it, though. As you know, websites that you can access from a traditional search engine are indexed on the web, and they are sourced by Google or any other search engine. Still, when it comes to databases that contain sensitive data or when certain websites aim to hide some of their content to be used only by premium subscribers, they hide those files and databases in the dark web, where they won’t be exposed to everyone who’s using the internet. So, as a result, the dark web isn’t as threatening and malicious as the deep web.
The deep web represents 1% or less of the whole internet. It’s the place your child should never access, and if you’re wondering why it’s simply because of the types of content and criminal acts that take place on the deep web since it can’t be traced by governments and users can surf it fully anonymous.
Worrying facts about the deep web call for urgent action to prevent your child from getting there, such as firearms and drug deals, child pornography, and extremely horrifying and shocking content of child abuse and torturing, besides other content that you don’t really want to your child to experience.
How to Stop It!
According to an article released by Several.com, there are some precautions that you can do to make sure that your child won’t get exposed to similar content on the web, such as:
- Keep an eye on what search engines are there on the device used by your child, and if you come across any of the following names, make sure to uninstall it immediately: Tor, DuckDuckGo, Onion, Yippy, and Torch.
- Use a trusted and reliable security software to detect any malware or suspicious links on your device or the one used by your child.
- Install trusted antivirus software on your child’s device, which offers a parental control feature; with this feature, you can control what your child access and which websites are allowed and which are not.
- Fill your children’s time with exciting and useful activities, and if you notice that they spend much time alone or are not themselves and acquiring new behaviors, you should talk to them and make sure that they’re not in trouble.
It’s never 100% safe when you’re online. However, you can take some steps to protect your family, considering the multiple threats and cybercrimes on the deep web. You definitely don’t your child to come across any of it accidentally or on purpose.
