E-mail accounts are fantastic ways for friends and family to keep up with each other. They are also great for children to use to set up dates with friends, share their thoughts and even keep in touch with Grandma and Grandpa, if they live out of state. Unfortunately, e-mail can also present some challenges. To keep children out of harm's way, there are some e-mail safety ideas parents can use.

E-mail safety begins with common sense, but children and even sometimes parents don't understand the ropes and they may not be aware of the dangers. There are three major situations that can present and turn into trouble when e-mail safety for children is a concern. They are:

Chat room follow up. When an Internet Service Provider's chat rooms are used, sometimes access to personal e-mail is a given. If this is the case with children and teens, this nifty little feature can enable bad guys to start sending e-mails to a youth's account. Through these e-mails and the chat rooms, these undesirables can make attempts to get to know youngsters and learn their personal information. When at all possible, it is advised that parents block e-mail identification when children use chat rooms. This e-mail safety tip may or may not be employable, depending on the Internet Service Provider being used and the type of chat room, but if blocking is allowed, it is a very wise idea.

Inappropriate materials. E-mail is one of the quickest, cost-effective and fun ways for people to keep up with each other. Sadly, it is also used to send a whole lot of inappropriate materials out to the ether, as well. To make sure a 6-year-old doesn't open up his e-mail to an eyeful, parents can set spam filters. How this works will depend on the e-mail program being used, but most have them. Setting spam filters even on an adult's account is not a bad e-mail safety tip to follow either.

Fishing letters. Adults and children often fall pray to these letters that solicit personal information. While spam filters can keep some of them out, a few might wiggle through. It is a wise e-mail safety practice to advise children to simply delete, without opening, any e-mail that comes from an unknown address. It's also wise e-mail safety to not reply to or follow through on links sent in this manner.

E-mail safety is generally on the bottom of the totem pole of parental concerns, but it likely shouldn't be. With predators going to great lengths to find children via the Internet, this is a door into a child's life that should be closed, or at least monitored closely. E-mail safety, like all other Internet safety, requires parental supervision and some basic rules of the road.