The Internet is the fastest growing mass medium and has become very much an integral part of our lives. Its importance as a communication platform and a depository of information makes it a powerful and indispensable educational resource. Yet its ease of access and cross-boundary nature makes it easy to be abused too.

Materials potentially harmful to our children, such as nudity, violence, crude language and gambling, abound on the Internet. The issue is causing grave and widespread concern. However, due to the complexity of the problem, legislative means alone is not an adequate response. Instead, all concerned parties must play a part in finding a better solution.

The role of parents, guardians and teachers

The ICRS project offers effective protection to your children. But it will not work without your participation. It is up to you, as parent, guardian and teacher, to ensure that children under your care will be able to make the most of the Internet as a learning resource without falling prey to its harms.

What you should do

Make good use of the protection made available by the ICRS project. Simply take a few minutes to download a FREE ICRA FILTER, tell it what you want and don't want your children to see, and the filter will control access to websites according to your instructions.

What are the filtering categories?

The system gives you a great deal of flexibility in your choices of what should and shouldn't be seen at home or at work. The filtering system can of course be disabled and enabled easily … if you're the one with the password!

The broad topics covered are:

• The nudity and sexual content of a site
  
• The violence depicted on the site
  
• The crude language depicted on the site
  
• Chat
  
• Others such as gambling, drugs and alcohol