Kidrex from alarms.org is a special Search Engine for kids that brings only the kid-relevant search results from across the web using Google ‘Safe Search’ technology.
Internet is increasingly being used today for search and information queries. It has become ‘THE’ most important tool for students to perform any sort of study and research, related to their subjects. Moreover, we have recently seen in the pandemic years that almost all the children have been confined to their smartphones and computers for their online studies and assignments. Many times parents are helpless and leave their children unaccompanied with these machines making them vulnerable to dangerous websites that promote sexual content, violence, vandalism, racism, terrorism etc.
With kids spending so much time online, we often don’t come to know what they are searching for, or whether they are being stalked by unknown virtual entities. This can be truly dangerous and worrisome, more so because internet nowadays has all kinds of information available.
KidRex is truly a saving grace in such times. It filters out the keywords, phrases, and links to remove sexual content and more that your child shouldn’t be searching or viewing.
I used KidRex to test and search for content that children should be viewing and compared the results with the original Google search engine. It worked fairly well when it comes to filtering. Following are the important steps for parents
- Set KidRex as the homepage of your browser. Click here for instructions on how to perform this step.
- Navigate to KidRex and search for some content that would be defined as inappropriate for your child and look at the results. A lot of unsuitable content would’ve been filtered.
- If you still find some content that is objectionable, on the KidRex Home Page, click on ‘Parents’ -> ‘Web Removal Request Tool’, fill in the details in the form to inform the developers of the unexpected and objectionable results
Web Removal Request tool
No method is full proof. KidRex has a database with a list of words and websites to be filtered, but there is always a probability of unsuitable content to sneak in. If you see an unsuitable search result despite all the filters, you can request that specific webpage to be removed and thereby contribute in making Kidrex safer for kids.
There is a good collection of Tips for Online Safety which can be accessed from this link.
Downside:
- As already stated above, there is always a chance that some inappropriate words / websites may not be filtered and this is true for any such kids-oriented safe search engine. But this is due to the fact that the websites unsuitable for children keep on growing and devising methods to escape from such tools.
- The database of unsuitable words, search results and content has to grow by leaps and bounds to actually filter out, block unsafe content and be very effective in real time.
Verdict:
Using Kidrex can offer you some assurance that your children won’t land up on any inappropriate pages. In this era of compulsive use of Internet, safe search engines like Kidrex are a very useful and welcome option. They grant our kids that much needed layer of safety from sexually explicit content, violence and more to protect their innocence and childhood. This is so important from the point of view of evolving a healthy and safe society in which our kids can grow up and turn to be responsible and matured citizens.
Go ahead and try it out from this link
