Absolutely have the computer in a family space, and not away in their bedroom.

Our kids are young enough (10 and 7) to not yet really try to be looking at stuff they shouldn't - so we've got the policy that if they hit anything that isn't right, or they are unsure, to come get one of us. They don't get in trouble, we just talk about what they've found and why it is not appropriate, etc, and then move on.

Out eldest plays quite a bit on a games site (mostly board games like backgammon, salvo and such). She's a bit of a social butterfly on this and so quite chatty with other people as she plays. Again, we've got the understanding that if somebody says something she thinks is strange then to come get one of us. So far we've only had one case where what was said was a bit odd, and we monitored her continued communications with that player until we were satisfied it was nothing.

We also talked to her at length about what information is okay to give out on the internet, and what isn't. She knows that if someone asks where she lives to say "Melbourne" and not our actual suburb, and certainly not our full address. Not to type in our phone number or even her surname without checking with us.

She has her own (gmail) email address, but knows that we know the passwords and can go in and check it out - mostly she uses it to email with Grandma which is lovely. I actually have it as an imap on my mail client, but mostly so I can go in and regularly clean up spam issues before she sees them.

We haven't had to deal with things like Facebook yet, but I've heard other parents have a condition of using FB is they have to friend their parent's account.

I think the best you can do is talk to your kids about good Internet habits on an ongoing basis. At this point it's the don't type in your phone number or full address. Later it will be the, "Would you want a potential employer reading this in five years time if they googled your name?" kind of talks about privacy and reasonable behaviour.

And even given all that, you'll still have the "kids will be kids" issues. They will eventually try and find porn on the Internet despite your best efforts. Hopefully if you've done a reasonable job, those efforts will be short lived. And if you're thinking, "My son would never do that," you're wrong. Many I parent I've shocked and dismayed because they've asked me to come over and clean up the family PC because it is running slow, and aside from the usual malware and such I've almost always found a porn stash.

One funny anecdote in closing. Before the days of widespread broadband our work had a bank of dial-up modems for employees to use to dial in so they could work remotely. Our actual Internet connect was also pretty slow, so it wasn't unusual for me to theck the proxy log if the Internet was really slow to try and diagnose what is going on.

On one such occurrence, I found someone logged in from one of the dial-up modems was looking up URLs that were obviously porn sites. I thought to myself, "I don't think she would be the type of person to be doing that" (she had left the office for the day). So I rang her house and the teenage son answered. "Hello, is so and so there?" "No, I'm the only one here at the moment." came the bored reply. So I said, "No worries. By the way, if you don't stop doing that you'll go blind." and hang up. Didn't say who I was or where I was from or nothing. That modem line dropped in five seconds flat.