The online world opens up a range of social and educational
opportunities for your child, but it also presents challenges. In
Pora Ora we want to support you in equipping your child with the
skills to use the internet safely. We see online safety skills as
skills for life, like swimming, or riding a bike.
Pora Ora can be used as a training ground where children can
learn how to interact safely online and where parents can gradually
relax security settings as they get older. Our hope is that children
get to the age of 13 with the skills needed to be discerning in the
use of adult social networking sites.
Parental Control Settings
To assist you in protecting your child on-line you can
configure / control the following features:
- Visibility settings
- Define who your child can interact with in-game. This can
range from 'nobody' to 'friends only' to 'school friends' to
'everybody'.
- Chat
- Configure whether or not your child is allowed to
send/receive 'free chat' messages or whether they are limited to a
set of preset chat phrases.
You can also monitor your child's activities in the game.
- News Feed
- A parental news feed notifies you of your child's key
activities in real-time. This enables you to monitor, review and
support your child's progress and actions in the game.
- Mail
- Review all mail messages that are sent and received between
your child and their friends.
- Friendships
- You can choose to be notified whenever your child makes a
new friendship in-game. Alternatively, you can prevent your children
making any friends without your approval.
System Controls
- Language Filter
- We use sophisticated community management software that
intercepts and filters out all mail, chat and gift messages that may
be considered to be rude or abusive. It also prevents the exchange
of personal information and monitors for conversations that may be
bullying or predatory in nature. Such instances are immediately
reported to moderators for full investigation and suspensions and/or
bans may result.
- Safety Quest
- Before your child can use social features like 'free chat',
he/she must complete an online safety tutorial. This instructs your
child on basic do's and don'ts in relation to safe chat (e.g. don't
share personal information), clean chat (e.g. don't use rude words)
and cyber-bullying, and gives them advice on how to deal with
certain challenging situations in an on-line environment. Our
community management software should protect your child from being
exposed to these situations, however this tutorial will give your
child the building blocks needed to become a discerning internet
user.
- Block Lists
- Players are be able to block and ignore other players at the
press of a button. People on your block list can't see you or speak
to you.
- Reporting Abuse
- Players can report other users for any unacceptable
behaviour. These reports are sent directly to our moderating staff
and may result in suspensions/bans for serious misbehaviour.
School Controls
- School Mode
-
When your pupils are playing Pora Ora in school, we recommend
enabling School Mode for their class / group. Not
only will this tighten up the security of their accounts, but it
will enable access to any premium features of Pora Ora!
- Visibility Settings
- When we set up accounts for your pupils, we are able to
configure their security settings so that they can only ever see and
interact with other students from their school / class. Just tell us
how you want it set up, we are happy to help!
- Chat
- We can either disable your pupils' chat functionality
permanently or set it up to turn off when playing in school. Again,
it's entirely up to you!
