Comet 'world's first' protects kids online

UK electrical retailer Comet has announced a 'world's first' which it hopes will safeguard children online.

Comet is to pre-install CyberPatrol software on all its own brand PCs in a move it hopes will help parents, who are often less web-savvy than their children, keep a control over what content can be accessed on the family computer.

John Carr, internet consultant to children's charity NCH, told silicon.com: "This is great news. It means when you buy a PC you won't have to go away and find out whether there are safety issues. This tells you what they are and will do something about it.

"A lot of parents buy PCs for their children because they are hassled into it and a lot of the time they don't know what he dangers are. This will tell them about offensive spam and deal with it. This will tell them about pornography and deal with it, and this will tell them about the dangers of chatrooms and deal with it."

Carr conceded that technology is not a universal cure-all for the dangers awaiting children online, and urged parents to keep learning about the internet. In fact, relying solely upon technology in isolation is far from perfect but he added that Comet's move represents an important stride in safeguarding children online.

"We hope eventually that everybody will be doing something like this," he added.

The pre-installed CyberPatrol software is available for a 14-day free trial. After that parents will be given the choice as to whether they wish to keep running it.

Bill Moir, Comet category manager, computing, said in a statement: "Comet has taken this action in response to a campaign being launched by the Children’s Charities’ Coalition for Internet Safety (CHIS) and the NSPCC’s Campaign for Greater internet Safety. By pre-installing this software we are hoping that parents, who would otherwise not think about this type of security device, will see the benefits and make a decision to source their own software package and install it – something that just isn’t happening at the moment."