Advice for Parents
What you need to know
Childminder is not a substitute for parental controls on your child’s computer but is designed to complement them. You should keep all parental restrictions activated if your child is enrolled in Childminder.
Childminder does not prevent your child from visiting sites that may be harmful or sites where dangerous people may try to contact them. It simply provides a system that web developers can use to age-restrict their sites. We provide badges so that your child can recognize sites that are part of our system.
What your child needs to know
Childminder issues a graphic to partner sites which they may use on their web-pages to indicate that the interactive features of their site are age-restricted. It is possible for any site to copy this graphic but we have built into it some features to make spoofing more difficult. It should include the following:
- The domain name of the site using the graphic (if it doesn’t the site is not really a partner - please report the site immediately)
- The current date and time in the GMT timezone (as above)
- A consistent choice of badge design known by your child but not by the participating site (your child should always see the same colours and design on the shield).
Even if the above are present and correct this is not a guarantee that the site is genuine and usual precautions should still be used.