What is the best way to control what is viewed on the web

David · Mar 23, 2008, 17:54:04

I have two young children and one is on her pc right now,she is a sensible girl she is only 9 and I am a little concerned at her viewing unsuitable things or for that matter reading or listening to things she shouldn't,is there anything I can do to control sites she may inadvertently come across

Hope this is the correct place for this question if not apologies in advance

Sebby · Mar 23, 2008, 17:55:19

I've never had any experience of this myself, so someone else will be able to say for sure. I know IE has a built-in content filter, but I suspect it's quite under-featured.

David · Mar 23, 2008, 17:57:21

Thanks Sebby,don't want to be heavy handed with her just protect

Rik · Mar 23, 2008, 17:58:27

There are various security suites with parental control, David. As I don't need one, I can't offer any personal experience, but there are some ratings here and I'm sure you'll get some personal views shortly. One thing I would say is stay away from the Norton offering.

David · Mar 23, 2008, 18:01:01

Thanks Rik only just got rid of Norton (and that was with your help)will check out this link

David · Mar 23, 2008, 18:06:21

Quote from: Rik on Mar 23, 2008, 17:58:27
There are various security suites with parental control, David. As I don't need one, I can't offer any personal experience, but there are some ratings here and I'm sure you'll get some personal views shortly. One thing I would say is stay away from the Norton offering.

Should have took the obvious root first,kaspersky has a parental control not sure how great it is

Rik · Mar 23, 2008, 18:06:55

Me neither unfortunately.

talos2 · Mar 23, 2008, 18:08:31

I have tried to set one up in the past and I think most of them are a bit sledghamerish, you can try to block sexual content, but I found it blocks everthing with the word sex in it, not much use to a young enquiring mind who just wants to know how to sex a rabbit for instance. The image blockers are a bit better, and do seem effective, but I wouldn't spend money on one, they are not much better than the filter used in the search engine's for free.

David · Mar 23, 2008, 18:38:56

very much appreciate your take on this subject,managed to switch everything st high level at the moment his and some gentle educating seems to be the only remedy

Edit: Smiley markup sorted

Simon · Mar 23, 2008, 20:55:59

I have no experience of this either, but a guy on my local radio was talking about the very same thing the other day, and he recommended Net Nanny, which might be worth looking at.

cavillas · Mar 23, 2008, 21:05:27

You could try OpenDNS/ You can block ip addresses via their website, you register for free and have a lot of control over content. You only have to change your dnsservers from idnet to open dns ones.

www.opendns.com

Gary · Mar 23, 2008, 21:58:56

You can block some sites in your router as well, but Net Nanny is a good option

David · Mar 23, 2008, 22:56:53

Thanks Everyone,really appreciate it all and will try them,(use my eyes and eyes as well) but thats between us

Captain K · Mar 23, 2008, 23:29:48

We found Cyber Patrol to be particularly good. I tested it with every conceivable undesirable subject I wouldn't want my kids to look at, and it resisted every single attempt. It was, however, very clever, and could discern between pornography and materials associated with sexual health and education, and between nazi/racist propeganda and material concerned with a historical analysis of the rise of the nazi party in 1930's Germany. I was impressed.

Niall · Mar 24, 2008, 02:58:21

Netgear routers allow site blocking. Zyxel are the best routers for that sort of thing though as they are very configurable.

Firefox has blocking options, and there are a lot of add ons for it too, which you can get to through the "tools - add ons - get extensions" section.

Peer Guardian blocks IPs, but there is no current version for Vista.

That's all I can think of at the moment.

Oh and while I'm thinking about it, when you post on these forums, it says "alt + s" will post. That is only the case for IE now as they changed Firefox a few versions ago, so it no longer does that, which irritates me immensely!

Sebby · Mar 24, 2008, 11:06:11

Alf has just reminded me about OpenDNS! That's what I use here; how could I forget?

If you use their servers (you can change the DNS' on the router so it's automatically applied to all computers on the network) and register on their site, you can block various types of sites (violence, etc) easily and effectively.

David · Mar 24, 2008, 17:48:42

Quote from: Captain K on Mar 23, 2008, 23:29:48
We found Cyber Patrol to be particularly good. I tested it with every conceivable undesirable subject I wouldn't want my kids to look at, and it resisted every single attempt. It was, however, very clever, and could discern between pornography and materials associated with sexual health and education, and between nazi/racist propeganda and material concerned with a historical analysis of the rise of the nazi party in 1930's Germany. I was impressed.This one seems really good and the price is very good compared to some

Dangerjunkie · Mar 24, 2008, 17:55:12

If you can find a cr*ppy old PC somewhere and stick a couple of network cards in it you could use as a dedicated filter you could try Dansguardian ( http://dansguardian.org/ .) It has the advantage of not being installed on her PC so as she gets older and more computer-literate she won't be able to bypass it by tampering with Windows.

Cheers,
Paul.

David · Mar 24, 2008, 20:18:06

Thanks Paul

Dangerjunkie · Mar 25, 2008, 06:59:06

Another advantage to DansGuardian is that you get to adjust what is blocked so you can adjust the blocking policies so as your daughter grows up so you can decide what is appropriate for her based on your values and how mature she is, rather than having the policy set by some, often ultra-conservative, religious corporation.

Cheers,
Paul.