I know some of y’all out there are parents, and that most of you care about what gets dumped into your kids’ souls. We gave the kids a hand-me-down computer a few months ago, and there are a few Web sites we let them visit. My question is this: What is the best Web-site blocking software? Our needs are simple: we want to block all sites unless my wife or I permit them.
Our oldest child is six, and I seriously doubt he can figure out how to defeat access-control software. The safest thing would be to filter sites at the router, which I could do, but it would be a pain for my wife.
Your thoughts?
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We filter ours at the wireless router, but that is software that comes with our router. It allows us to put in a password to override the parental blocking for one hour at a time, so that adults can surf more freely.
If you use internet explorer, it has a content advisor that works with a password…go under ‘tools’, then ‘internet options’ and ‘content’ tab. For a 6 year old it will work well, not so well for teens.
IE’s “parental control” system, like most other MS software, is worthless. It’s based on voluntary site ratings, which means that the site owner has to put the extra code on his site himself if he wants IE’s system to work with it. How many people are going to do that? Besides which, it only works with IE. Kids just need to download Firefox et al and they can surf where they like.
If you want to spend $$$ for a high-quality solution, Cybersitter is good. It’s probably way more than what you need, however. If you have one of the internet security suites, like Norton or McAfee, they allow exactly what you are looking for.
Of course, if you put Linux on it, you could just edit iptables.config with a few simple ALLOW and DENY statements, but I will refrain from making snarky comments about the superiority of Linux and the utter ineptitude of Gatesian operating systems.
We have a copy of Kid Desk Internet Safe. It’s a little older, but it was effective for our little children. If you send me your mailing address, I’ll send you my copy.
For foolproof surfing restrictions, you really have to go outside your PC to your net router. Without knowing what you have, it’s difficult to make proper recommendations. Essentially, security of this type really needs to be at a box that the kids can’t get into and can’t even physically get to.
Are any of your young ones of an engineering bent? I know that I would have viewed such a restrictive policy as a challenge when I was young.
I guess this configuration would do:
Broadband router => Linux firewall/proxy server => LAN switch => user PCs
You can run two instances of the proxy server, one with access control and one without, and make the open proxy password-protected.
As long as you can lock the router and firewall in a cabinet, it should suffice. :-)