A Parent's Guide To Linux Web Filtering

Roblimo writes "Not all parents want their children exposed to everything on the Internet, especially porn. So far, virtually all home-level Net filtering software has been for Windows. This tutorial on NewsForge, by Joe Bolin, shows Linux-using parents how to set up Web filtering for *their* children -- and shows them how to customize filters to fit their own tastes and beliefs instead of relying on a commercial software company's ideas of 'good' and 'bad,' too."

Comments

Excellent

[ReverendHoss]

The easier and more accurate it is for parents to filter content for their own children, based on their own values, the less likely it is for them to scream for the government to do it for them.

Re:Excellent

[stienman]

Actually I doubt this will make much of a difference at all.

Even if they are always around to protect their kids parents still demand that 'public' places be free of anything that could harm their children. The internet is often seen as a public place. Unless the 'magazine racks' are covered and the 'bars' are closed to anyone under a certian age they will feel that the government should step in an ensure that these steps are taken. This doesn't even touch problems with identity, stalking, etc.

This is not a terrible thing. It is a new responsibility that parents have had to adjust to in the last decade. Any reasonable step that can be enacted with little cost that does not prevent another's right to use the internet should be enacted.

The 'internet' is still in a state of tremendous change. There is no way that a reasonable response can be created that will stand the test of time. Any response now will fall far short of the ideal. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, though. As we develop new techniques to match the internet's development we'll learn valuable lessens.

It's not much different than spam. Techniques come, are honed, changed, and then go. We all expect (and know) that eventually the tide will turn and spam will be managed effectively. Similarily, we all know and expect that certian regulations will be set in place that will make it difficult for minors to open themselves to crimes of opportunity or exposure to things which the law currently says should be restricted to adults (or to minors only under adult supervision).

This article is good for the tech savvy parent, but it certianly will not affect the majority opinion.

-Adam

Re:Excellent

[orthogonal]

What are your values? Free porn for all kids? There are legitimate reasons to agree as a society that kids viewing porn is not a good thing. The government frequently passes laws restricting behavior of children in the interests of protecting them. (mandatory bike helmets, can't buy beer until you're 21, ban Joe Camel ads, etc.)

Well, perhaps there are legitimate reasons to keep kids from porn.

But there are certainly legitimate reasons to insist that parents are responsible to monitor their children's use of the internet and not expect the nanny-State to do it for them.

There's no mechanism for keeping porn form kids that doesn't involve the government judging content and registering that content or its viewers, or both.

And there is a chilling effect on free speech if one has to get government permission before distributing content or fear government prosecution afterwards. The cure is worse than the disease.

Let's recall the various works banned by the U.S. Government for "obscenity"; DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, James Joyce's Ulysses -- and even Voltaire's political/religious satire Candide -- all were banned from the United States by U.S. customs inspectors. And all, of course, are now considered classic works of literary art.

And as I noted previously, there is plenty of stuff on the internet that, while not obscene, probably shouldn't be viewed by children. Will you ban pictures of the Nazi Holocaust in your attempt to make the internet safe for children?

And the whole "for the children" argument is a straw-man, set up by fundamentalists who are using "the children" as an excuse to keep porn from adults by banning porn altogether.

Sorry -- there are many good things in this world that it's not at all good to expect the government to provide.

Health care is a good, and I suspect that many parents would desire free health care for their kids even more than government suppression of porn. Little Johnny will recover from seeing a "beaver shot" a lot more easily than he'll recover from leukemia.

But the same fundamentalist conservatives who swear up and down that it will be positively disastrous for government to get in the universal health care business -- even just for kids --, advocate government telling us what we can and cannot view -- for the benefit of "the children".

The same conservatives who explain that government regulation of business stifles innovation and creates a drag on the economy, want to regulate the 50 billion dollar porn industry out of business -- even though by far the vast majority of porn customers are adults.

The same conservatives who rail against "Big Government" apparently don't think it's too much for government to vet every one of million of web pages?

Please: the same fundamentalists who preach about "personal responsibility" every time they want to cut a welfare program or unemployment benefits, can't ask a middle-class parent able to afford a computer and an internet connection to watch what sites his kids visit?

Re:Excellent

[v01d]

When a kid is in fifth grade, that is not the time to be questioning authority. Questioning authority at that age is just being disrepectful to your elders.

Respect is earned. If my daughters's teacher is a complete idiot, I will tell them so.

My sister's third grade teacher told the class that red headed children aren't as smart. If you silently accept that from a teacher you are a pathetic excuse for a parent, and are doing a disservice to your child.

Kids need to respect thier teachers.

Teachers need to earn that respect. I have rarely seen a respectable teacher not get the respect they deserve.

Nice one!

[Grell]

This could really help push Linux for schools and libraries. (who don't need the extra expense of the "secure" kiosk's their paying for now.)

~G

Actually, it doesn't.

[Fooby]

The article only tells how to install iptables, squid, and Dan's Guardian. It doesn't tell how to customize it to your own tastes or values. Here, in full, is all the article says about customizing the filter:

While Dan's Guardian provides an excellent filter all by itself, you may want to exercise further control over the Web filtering by editing the other files in the /etc/dansguardian directory that contain external blacklists. Blacklists from squidGuard and URLBlacklist work perfectly with Dan's Guardian. Each file contains a brief explanation for its contents to make configuration easier.

So what we have is a case of relying on "Dan's" ideas of good and bad, rather than a commercial company's. Not a huge improvement on the face of it if parents are just going to install an open-source tool rather than a commercial one. Better yet would be to educate the kids and monitor their behavior rather than trusting some blanket censorship tool, open-source or not.

Re:Why Censor?

[jawtheshark]

I'm not a parent... So take everything I say with a grain of salt.

I have been on the internet for 10 years. Back then I was 17, which means I was not really a child. However one thing I learned quite quickly is that you have to search for porn/hatespeech/$fill_in_gross_stuff. Yes, I know rotten.com and I have visited it. Stuff there was quite a curiosity the first time I saw it.

Now, 10 years ago there was a child in this house. My sister. She was 12 back then. I did not once see anything questionable on her screen, nor in her browser cache (I used to monitor her stuff as a worried brother, my parents couldn't have done it) This means: if your kids go and visit those sites they have searched for it, or got the link from a friend. In the latter case you can be pretty sure they that they would have gotten the information anyways. I mean: how hard is it to go over to your friends place and ask him/her to show the site that you couldn't visit at home.

So, if I'm ever a parent, I'll just make sure to monitor what my kids do and not block their access. If I catch them doing something I can't condone then it'll just be time for a little chat.

Bayesian Filters Applied to Web Content

[nullspace]

Has anyone applied a Bayesian filter to web content? This would be an interesting way to give the filter a set of initial conditions from which it could derive an ever-increasing better filtration of content based off the parent's initial criteria.

If there is a pre-existing application, I would interested to know.

Helicopter parents

[FerretFrottage]

My wife (OMG, ./er who is married) calls these parents "Helicopter Parents" because they just hover over their kids, but as soon as there is an incident with regards to the child and the school and/or teacher, they immediately fly on in assuming that they (the school/teacher) are the cause of the "accident". It's sad when my wife is surprised that the parent(s) supports the teacher's or school's position. She actually got offered $5k by a parent to pass her child so that they could get the kid out of the house (this was in the affluent Plano west high school). She turned it down which is probably why she's a teacher and I'm not...I'd take the $5k and still fail the dumba$$

Re:Why filter?

[HeyLaughingBoy]

I can't personally understand why parents want to filter the internet for their children

Well, I am a parent and the reasons are not always what you'd think. First, note that my 3 year-old doesn't do any more with our computers than type his name and those of his friends (hey, it makes him happy :-) Even so, his mother and I have already agreed that when he needs a computer, it will be in plain sight so we can occasionally glance over at what he's doing. I personally don't think filtering is worth the effort.

That said, children vary in their responses to different things. I tried watching Miyazaki's Spirited Away with him. Yeah, I read the "scary for kids" warning, but I figured I'd gauge his response to it. He was terrified. By what you ask? The scene where the child's parents turn into pigs. He's not afraid of pigs, he thinks they're funny. But he was terrified that his mother and I might turn into pigs like in the movie. Make sense? No, but he's three years old!

In real life, we already have issues with him being influenced by kids whose parents (if you can call them that) apparently have wildly different ideas about childrearing than we. So he already knows a few words he we don't want him using and has made a few statements that would be pretty nerve-wracking if he actually knew what they meant. We can handle stuff like this because it's out front. If he were learning this stuff online it would be much more difficult to figure out the source and decide how to handle it.

Most parents' response to the net is similar to how they view books or movies: I don't want my son watching "Saving Private Ryan" for quite a while because I know how many nightmares he'll have. But if he happens to see the occasional bare tit on TV, no big deal. He'll just giggle and forget about it.

The fundamental issue is that of not exposing a child to material that he's not yet ready for. And this decision should rest solely with the parent. Our job's hard enough as it is; for those who want to use it, filtering is just one more tool.