How To Configure Real PC Parental Controls?

Orange Crush writes "As the resident computer geek in an office full of accountants, my boss recently asked me how she could reasonably keep her teenage son from using the family computer to 'access inappropriate sites.' I of course responded 'Give up now. There's nothing in this world that can keep a determined teenager from acquiring porn.' Sadly, she was dissatisfied with this answer. I mentioned that there was in fact software available for this purpose, but that all of it was trivially easy to bypass for a clever young mind. I really can't think of another answer. She could password protect the BIOS to prevent booting a different OS, but that's easily defeated with a screwdriver at most. The only solutions I can think of involve upstream firewalls/proxies/etc to which I gleefully redirected her to her ISPs tech support number. As much as I disagree with her reasoning — and ignoring the obvious 'go to a friend's house' loophole — is there really any other way (on a home budget) to netnanny a household computer?"

Comments

Re:parenting?

[Anonymous Coward]

All the knee-jerk comments about 'do your job, be a parent' miss the point, and serve only to gratify the poster's ego and holier-than-thou self-image.

This is a real problem, and it is criminal there is no good solution, such as an xxx domain.

Why can't I buy internet service from some provider that blocks at least 99.9% if not 100% of porn? Why hasnt the 'free market' given me that choice? There is something wrong here. There is a market for this type of service yet it doesnt exist. Why not? Is it because Comcast relies on porn for their profits? It would seem to be so, judging by their cable line-up.

I actually ran across a reasonable solution some 3 years ago where a router mfr had bundled a proxy server in there router so all web page loads were checked at a remote server first before being served to the client browser. It worked pretty good. But this service went away, and is apparently no longer available.

Re:How about actually supervise your child

[UbuntuDupe]

"Oh, look honey, it's another childless /. poster who handwaves away difficult parenting situations."

"That's nice, dear."

Re:logging firewall and TALKING

[Rakishi]

all i have to say is good luck in the real world. the real world doesn't like spoiled brats like yourself. The real world seems to be working out quite nicely for me right now. Being a teenager is not a very fun time for some.

eventually thinking you have a good answer to everything will catch up to you. I'm not the one who started saying that they have the solution to a problem. I'm simply pointing out that it can fail miserably sometimes and the parent may not even be aware that it does.

i'm too busy to sit here and waste my time picking out all the holes in your arguments, but believe me, there are plenty of holes. I'm not arguing for anything, just saying how I would have acted as a teenager. It's something you want to avoid your kids ever doing btw.