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What Filters Are Right For Kids?
WaywardGeek writes "My daughter is using phrases like 'hot guys,' and soon will have a chat about the birds and the bees. I believe in letting kids discover the world as it is, and have no Internet controls on any of our systems, which are mostly Linux based. However, it's not fair for aggressive porn advertisers to splash sex in her face without her permission. My question is: What Linux-based Internet filtering solution do Slashdot dads favor, and do they hinder a child's efforts to learn about the world?"
Keep the computer in the living room.
No Longer a Menace to Society.
Alexandria Morrigan born 2/22/01 l. 20.5in wt. 7 lbs. 5 oz.
Cheesecloth works pretty good to get the chunks out.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It's too late. To apologize. Too late.
Filter or no filter, its just bad for them especially at that age.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Seriously, if all you are worried about is her getting porn ads when she doesn't want them, just use adblock.
Monstar L
opendns
Um . . . "splash sex in her face" . . . oooooh-kaaaaaay . . .
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
The filter in their own brain.
If he wants a filter that is more difficult to bypass by the child, Privoxy is pretty handy.
You. Yes you. You are the best filter for your kids. Keep them close when they are surfing, and educate them as to what is right and what is wrong.
Don't abdicate your parental responsibilities to a glorified script, do the work. You had the kid(s), you need to take responsibility. If you are going to allow them to use the net, you have to police it.
If you don't, things will lead to heavy metal music, video games, then mass murder, the choice is yours. (yes, that was sarcasm)
Seriously though, live up to your responsibilities, and you AND your child will be better off. No filter can or will do this, nor will it answer questions and educate.
-Charlie
I suggest you filter all your daughter's internet queries through a time machine that leads to a not so distant past where "splash in her face" was not a part of the male collective consciousness.
Use openDNS and set up an account. Point your router's DNS settings to their servers. It allows a few different levels of filtering. You can change the levels of filtering as she grows older.
You could try OpenDNS to filter porn and adult sites.
Filter out the porn and non-porn ads alike. Two birds with one stone.
If you want to block porn, or at least make it no fun, use Lynx as the browser. That is the browser I used when I was introduced to computers.
I'm glad you posted this. I was wondering the same thing. I know there is http://dansguardian.org/ but I haven't talked to anyone who uses it. I know OSX has great built in security features, but XP leaves you out there on your own to buy something.
I never, ever see porn ads because I've got Adblock Plus installed in FF. If she prefers IE for some weird reason then just put an ad-filtering web-proxy on your network like Junkbuster.
Redirect all outbound connection attempts on port 80 through your router to that proxy and you'll be good to go. That way she won't have porn ads splashed in her face but she'll still be able to Google for hot guys with SafeSearch turned off :).
Nick
Set your DNS server to open DNS. It blocks a lot of porn, phishing, .... I have it setup as the default from my router so it is not on the computer's settings. Go to
http://www.opendns.com/
That should scare her away for a couple of decades.
Just change your DNS servers to OpenDNS (http://www.opendns.com/) and register your IP with them. You can use their category-based filtering to block the pr0n. Block adware, malware, and phishing while you're at it. Oh, and enjoy a faster DNS service and extensive stats pages. If you are worried about a dynamic IP from your ISP, don't be: most ISP's preferentially reassign IPs to customers instead of switching it up. Happy censoring!
Her interest in sex is pretty much limited to looking at cute guys in her class and in teen magazines.
Girls aren't as affected by the visual stimulation from porn ads. At least not to the extent that boys are.
She's not going to be any better off because you start filtering her internet. It's like wrestling a pig. It's dirty and tiresome and just pisses the pig off.
That seems reasonable enough. If your daughter isn't actually going looking for porn.
If she is, you need to have a talk. Not porn=bad because that won't work. Rather: porn=unrealistic. And that she needs to understand that much of what she will see is the result of payment to foolish and desperate people.
Oh, and build up her self-esteem. That is the critical factor in teen girls getting into situations they're not ready for.
They should only see what I want them to see. Now if I could only find one.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Adblock for Firefox should keep out most of the unwanted ads. The best thing you can do is keep the computer in the living room but try and let her have as much privacy as possible.
-1, totally missing the point. The OP specifically wants to let his kid explore. However, exploring kids are quite likely to wind up places THEY don't want to be, once they start looking around. I'm sure you can think of a few search terms that might give you relevant, useful information on Wikipedia...but that you might not ever want to type into GIS. Heck, my reading of the question was more like "How can I let her wander the internet ON HER OWN, going wherever she wants, without having to call me in to close a barrage of pop-up windows".
And we all turned out alright.
Your kids are gonna find out. Accept it. The right approach is education. And not retarded "well, ya see, when a boy and girl really, really like each other" education. Real education. And approval thereof. Tell them about condoms. Tell them about birth control. Tell them about a pumpkin-sized blood-covered creature ripping out of the girl's crotch leaving behind so much damage that the doctor quits using stitches and opts to replace everything with a steel plate.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
I use "Dan's Guardian" (http://dansguardian.org/), and squid on my home network. This provides reasonable filtering - kind of like a free "WebSense" - and allows me to go through the logs to see where users have been, even if they clear the history and cache of their browsers.
I can vouch for taking interest in your kids activities combined with noscipt or adblock doing a great job.
Your daughter will probably become savy to understand what to type in a google query and what not to type very fast. You may wish to teach her also how to read the URL name in google results and avoid the funky ones.
I use smoothwall with Dansguardian for my church, home and family, works GREAT!
As long as she's talking about hot guys and not hot girls, I wouldn't worry too much.
It may go against conventional wisdom on Slashdot, but filters don't particularly hinder a child's efforts to learn about the world. If there is something that they want to see, they can ask you if it's ok and you can unblock it. That's the 21st century version of the way that parents used to do it. Part of being a parent is being a gatekeeper. Some information your kids just need to be largely innocent of until they become adults. It's one thing to know that the ugly side of the world exists. It's another thing to take few measures to stop your kids from participating in it out of curiosity.
Being Linux, you're likely using FireFox or one of it's builds (eg. Debian's IceWeasel). I recommend the AdBlock add-on, and possibly the NoScript add-on as well. In the process of blocking ads in general, AdBlock's going to get most of the porn ads as well. Set up bogofilter for e-mail filtering and you'll quickly get all the spam (including all the porn spam) diverted into a junk folder (Thunderbird has similar filtering built-in with it's junk-mail flagging feature, I use bogofilter mainly because I alternate between Thunderbird and Pine as my mail readers and want the junk-mail filtering to happen regardless of which one I'm using at the moment). That should take care of the majority of the problem. What's left will be search result spam, and those are mostly obvious from reading the result without having to visit the site to find out.
NOW.
Filter out the obvious stuff. You won't stop a dedicated teen from finding what they want, but you can try to stop them from getting things they don't want that are inappropriate.
I have a daughter and a son, and yes, knowing there will be a day when my kids are looking for 'Hot [Gender of choice]' scares the shit out of me.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
We have all mac OS X machines in the house, so that helps the adults. My child also has "BumperCar" as her browser, very safe.
Use OpenDNS and adjust the content filters to block porn, adult content, or whatever you like. I assume you're married so you obviously don't need porn on any of the computers in your home, right? But, for those times when the wife ane kid are away, you can whitelist your favorite site(s) and... well, whatever.
With those two in place she will never see a dirty picture she didn't look for. More than once I have recommended a site (usually a hacking or cracking site) to a friend and had them remark on how much porn advertising was on the site and all the porn popup ads. I hadn't even realized it because I was using AdBlock[er] and NoScript and wasn't seeing any of that.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Today mine got up at 5 a.m. My answer would have to be, "coffee filters".
it's not fair for aggressive porn advertisers to splash sex in her face without her permission. My question is: What Linux-based Internet filtering solution do Slashdot dads favor
Instead of using a filter maybe a hosts file would work better for you. Google has a number of results where you can download one. Basically what they are are files with URLs and IP addresses that are directed to the local host. If you try to go to pornadvertizing.com it will look for it on your computer. It's easy to add and remove websites from the file, to add a website just add "127.0.0.1 pornadvertizing.com" to the file on a new line. If I recall right, to use one on Linux just put the hosts file in the etc directory. I know that's where I put it in OS X.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
But seriously, I use Adblock Plus, and I haven't seen a porn or pop-up ad in months.
What was once true, is no longer so
You sound like a "concerned parent" trying to not be the stereotypical fucking tyrant we read so much about on Slashdot, but you're failing at it and rationalizing that it's the advertisers fault so you can put up filtering and ensure that your little angle stays innocent and ignorant.
("splash sex in her face without her permission" actually means "splash sex in her face without my permission" - don't try to cover it up with your bullshit)
It's time for you as a human being to sit down and have a serious conversation with yourself: your daughter is growing up, plain and simple. If she's looking for "hot guys" today, in a few years she's going to be searching for "where can I buy a dildo in XXX" (or 10 years, or whatever, I don't know how old she is).
Once you've finally understood that your daughter is growing into a sexual being, and that it's OK, you can approach this from the perspective of helping her to grow up, rather than forcing a bag over her head and keeping her in the dark.
Honestly, if she's looking for hot guys, then it's time to sit down and talk with her about it - find out what her reasons are, why she wants to look at hot guys. It may be embarrassing, but if you simply filter the content, you're just keeping her in the dark about things she wants to learn about - and that creates a whole new subset of problems based around authority.
Setup a proxy that uses a whitelist. You should be approving every single site she goes to. It'll be annoying for a little while, while you add all the sites she regularly goes to, but after a while each time she asks for a new site, it'll be a good opportunity to talk to her about what she's doing online.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
DansGuardian
Either put it on their desktop or install on a server if they use OSX/Microsoft windows.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
I mean the government is going to take care of this kind of thing down there, honestly...
Not Vantage! They have a hole in them. The manufacturer knows about the hole in the filter and will do absolutely nothing to patch it. They consider it a "feature" instead of a bug. Yeah right...
As a kid I know I used to spend hours in front of encyclopedias for that...I guess that's one sign of a true nerd. And of course some kids learned a lot from National Geographic. I'd suggest setting her up with a list of links to places that are 'known good'--Wikipedia for the most part, and other similar places that are good starting points for honest research. There's quite a few sites out there that would be more useful to a curious kid (and much, much less traumatizing!) than undirected search on Google. So, give her places she can choose to use to start her search, without there being any real coercion or technological barriers involved.
Once she has some good starting points you can trust, the only real harm in my mind is getting barraged by ads and clicking links that don't quite look like ads to an X-year-old. Can't recommend any tech for that, but the other replies sure can.
There's this whole controversy about what age is a good age for Sex Education, and how long to "prolong the innocence of Childhood". Sometimes people do this because it's "cute";- I consider it potentially damaging. But a lot depends on circumstances.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Give DansGuardian a try http://dansguardian.org/
Actually, something like that exists for Linux and any OS that uses DNS - check out OpenDNS.
http://www.opendns.com/
You can configure what levels of filters to use and even customize the page that opendns supplies when a forbidden link is clicked.
They are also working to block some of the botnet phone homes.
All you need to do is use their name servers. You can set up an account and configure what gets blocked and what doesn't.
Also check out an enhanced hosts file at http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm.
That will block a lot of requests from ever leaving the computer. You can also add in whatever others you want as well.
" I believe in letting kids discover the world as it is"
There's a word for parents like you... grandparents.
I only whitelist the sites that teach good lessons for their development into adulthood:
Zombo.com: You can do ANYTHING there.
Goatse: What better way to show what one can accomplish if you put your mind to it?
2G1C: Teamwork and empowerment
Lemonparty: Appreciation for the elderly.
I'd list more, but CPS is here. Must be donation season or something.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Um . . . "splash sex in her face" . . . oooooh-kaaaaaay . . .
I, too, find his choice of words inappropriate and really unfortunate, but maybe that's because I'm into uh... face-splashing. I noticed the quote at the bottom of this page:
Be not anxious about what you have, but about what you are. -- Pope St. Gregory I
So now we should be anxious about being face-splashers? And why is the Pope commenting on this anyway?
I got open internet access when I was 12, saw a lot of porn, it didn't scar me. Of course I saw a lot of mags before that. I understand your concern, but images of people having sex probably aren't going to make your kids crazy. Young bonobos see the adults go at it all the time, they seem to turn out OK. What you don't want is her being too young and actually having sex; that should be the focus of your conversation with her.
"splashing sex in [your daughter]'s face" is probably not a very good metaphor for what you're intending.
In addition to the OpenDNS option, I use SQUID proxy server with Filtering inline.
If you Google "Squid Proxy Filtering" you'll find a great deal of information and howtos to set it up. The other approach is to add a white list type filter if you're really anal (pun intended) about it.
Use Google for searches and turn on STRICT filtering, which helps a great deal as well.
Honestly, they might run into a few sites here and there with objectionable content, but it should be rare if you take just a few of the more highly recommended suggestions here.
Lastly, most of the bigger ISPs now offer a range of products and services for parental controls. I'm not sure how many of these are Windows (and MAC) only, rather than inline services, so YMMV.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
You're a sick bastard for saying what everyone else was only thinking.
You demand that the government censor the entire internet for the safety of The Children!
;)
If the OP is using a linux router/gateway machine, why not use something as simple as squid-guard?
http://www.squidguard.org/
http://www.squid-cache.org/
Blacklists here: http://www.shallalist.de/
It allows for customization (trusted/untrusted) and seems to be very effective. Good luck!
And we all turned out alright.
By what measure do you figure that? WE have completely fraked up the entire western world within the space of two generations.
This is my sig.
Foxfilter is a password protected firefox content filter. So unless you have another browser installed it should do the job. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4351
I can say with certainty that I sincerely doubt I was damaged in any way by getting the birds & bees understanding at the tender age of 3. In fact, I suspect that I ended up with significantly healthier attitudes, because when my classmates were going gaga over boobs I was more wondering what the big deal was.
"The innocence of childhood" is a concept used to protect parents from the thought that their kids are going to grow up and have sex. It has nothing to do with protecting kids, and everything to do with making adults think they're protecting kids.
I am officially gone from
Extra Slim Filter Tips should definitely be considered when purchasing filters.
Actually there is good deal on at Amazon currently only £11.99: Extra Slim Filter.
I'm a bit worried about the 4 used & new available from £5.85
On one hand you tell us you believe in letting your kids grow up and see the world as it is then you claim it's not fair that porn advertisers splash ads in her face.
What does that even mean? It's okay for other aggressive ads to be forced upon her? so your objection is actually about sex? If so then why say you have no problem with them growing up to understand it? In this case, you're after censorship and the best way is monitoring what your child does, this is often (or maybe not nowadays judging by the amount of parents who try and absolve themselves of any blame when their kids do something dumb/criminal) referred to as parenting.
If that's not what you mean and you in fact mean your problem is just with aggressive advertising in general then just use an ad/popup blocker like anyone else.
Either way, don't say you mean one thing and then do the exact other, else it's rather hard to offer answers because we can't really tell what you're actually trying to achieve.
Oh and by the way, I'm a little intrigued to know where on earth she's visiting to get such ads thrust in her face in the first place. The worst I get is ads for russian brides, and they're not even pornographic or at least are barely so. Chances are, if she's getting those ads, she's already visiting hardcore sites by choice and not by accident anyway.
I experienced the content problem first hand about a year ago. I have a FreeBSD server running NAT and using squid for proxying traffic to the internet. Since I routinely update my server at home to be a close copy of the servers I configure for the offices where I used to work, I was cruising thru the logs one day and noted several hours worth of internet porn URLs in the squid logs.
So I went into /usr/local/etc/squid/errors/English and edited ERR_ACCESS_DENIED with a nice custom message, then modified /usr/local/etc/squid/squid.conf by adding something similar to the following lines, putting partial domain names where "nameX" is:
#ACL List to block porn sites
acl blockregurl url_regex -i name1
acl blockregurl url_regex -i name2
acl blockregurl url_regex -i name3
http_access deny blockregurl
For me this was beneficial in three ways. One, it gave me a little practice on filtering content via squid using ACLs. Two, it let my son know that no matter what he's doing, I have a pretty good idea what it is, and finally the entertainment benefit I received thanks to the modified ERR_ACCESS_DENIED which essentially ripped on him than told him to call my cell phone when he got done reading the page. It was about 4:30pm the next morning when I got a phone call from him that was all of two words: "I'm Sorry".
Not everyone has the time or patience or desire to create ACLs, keep them updated, setup and maintain your own proxy server, but there's really nothing to it and the benefit is in the knowledge that you can keep random tabs on everything without the kids feeling like you're intruding.
(until you do, that is)
To avoid corruption, one must remain dishonest.
Seriously, use a combination of a adblock/webnanny type software and get a good router and block the content there and tell her when she cracks the security she is old enough for teh pron
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
i would expand on the note by moodyloner, living room, kitchen. basically don't let your daughter have a computer in her room. keep the computer in an open area. also, i use only use firefox as my browser and extensively use adblock. i've also found that the popup blocker in the newest firefox is very effective. i use thunderbird as my e-mail app. i use the junk mail setting set on highest, which seems to pick off most offensive e-mails. i suggest looking at all of your kids e-mails. and tell them that you are monitoring their e-mail for scams, viruses, trojans ... don't monitor their e-mail for "unflattering" talk about you. and if you see something that doesn't portray you in your best light, DON'T bring it up to your kids. let it go. but, keep abreast of what your kids are looking at. talk to them about it. and above all, be open and honest.
schleprock
I use IPCop with Cop+ addon. This is a linux based Firewall with content filtering on top which uses blacklists etc to block site, you also have the ability to add you own blacklists and also complete control over sites with execption rules. Been using it for many years and have not seen any porn in that time. Install IPCop http://www.ipcop.org/ The install the add-ons server 2.3b2 http://firewalladdons.sourceforge.net/ Then install Copplus 2.2-b3 http://firewalladdons.sourceforge.net/ I also use other add-ons like Nettraffic to view daily internet(Red) interface traffic across my home network.
Well, adblock should stop the agressive pron advertisers, and if I understand what you say your goals are correctly that would be filtering enough.
I've been a single father for most of the past sixteen years. I did hardly anything to screen out offensive material when my daughter was younger. Not only that, I let her have her own computer in her room, so I wasn't there to watch over her shoulder either.
What I did do was set up transparent proxying through Squid on the Linux box that runs as our house firewall so I could scan the logs from time to time and see where she was going. She knew that her usage was being logged, but beyond that I did nothing at all. In reality a much bigger problem than porn was the extent to which supposedly kid-friendly sites actually contained a large proportion of drive-by installs mostly for advertising crap. I ended up with a Squid acl list largely composed of places like atwola.com and Gator. I never had to add a block for any site containing pornographic or other questionable materials. After a couple of rounds of cleaning this type of junk off her (then Windows) computer, I decided the only solution was to block it at the router. These days she uses Ubuntu, so adware is much less of a problem.
The bigger problem actually began when I let her have an email account (indeed she owns her own domain). Despite years of experience scanning email for myself and my clients, it was still impossible to keep the occasional attached gif from getting through. Unfortunately these tend to the more disgusting end of the porn spectrum; I would have been less disturbed by her seeing more conventional sexual behaviors. The couple of times this happened she mentioned it to me and said she had deleted the offending message immediately. We had a talk about not opening messages from people you didn't know, but often a graphic will show up in the message preview windows (in Thunderbird in our case) without any active choice by the reader.
Now I only have the one girl, so I don't know how generalizable this experience might be. I do know that, at seventeen, she harbors little or no interest in porn and had, if anything, even less interest in it at 11-13. If she were male, the story might have been different. However my attitudes about her Internet usage were consistent with the general degree of freedom I permitted her in other realms of life. She always had a lot of freedom and today seems much more mature and self-disciplined than some of her friends and acquaintances who grew up in stricter households. I'm proud to call her my daughter.
..while you are busy setting up filters and DNS routes and privoxy, your daughter is taking nude pictures on her cellphone and "sexting" to her classmates.
My suggestion to parents based on 25 years of IT experience specializing in K-12 and Higher Ed: Relying on technology, religion, threats or the schools to provide your child with a sense of moral right and wrong is a one way ticket to major disappointment. Spend the time you're wasting on research and implementing solutions and invest it in building a relationship with your son or daughter. You can't insulate them from the world, better to build a sense of trust.
The Internet is not "the world as it is." You wouldn't take her to an adult bookstore and drop her off to browse, would you? The way to learn about the world is not through unsupervised web surfing. What sites is she going to where she would see porn ads anyway? I don't see porn ads in the course of my browsing (well, unless I browse to a porn site)...you're not going to find those ads on any site a prepubescent child would want to visit.
Why does "fair" even figure into this? Where is it written that anything has to be fair the way you define fair? It sounds like you consider it unfair that the world doesn't behave as you think it should...perhaps you're the one who needs to learn about the "world as it is."
Here's how we do it in our house (kids ages 11, 9, 6). The computer for the kids is in a communal room (not in a bedroom). Parental controls: on (more restrictive for the youngest). E-mail whitelist (boxtrapper): on.
How do my kids learn about the world? Let's see...school (all 3 are above grade level and in gifted programs where applicable). Family discussions. We watch TV together as well (Discover Channel has great stuff). We visit museums and historical sites. In other words, we spend time with our kids. We set limits and as they grow up and can handle more those limits are relaxed.
We don't turn them loose unsupervised then whine that the Internet is "not fair".
As a disclaimer, I'm a reseller, but I liked the service so much I contacted them about becoming a sales person:
http://www.itsafe4.me/
Basically, it works similar to OpenDNS's porn filtering...but it has one huge advantage in that it does not require a static IP address to work (OpenDNS requires either a static IP address or DynDNS to work).
You can just change the DNS settings in your router or computer and it just works. Takes all of five minutes to set up.
Minus side is that it won't block chat...but starting at 2.00 a month, its a very easy way to filter your entire network.
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
$ sudo echo '127.0.0.1 192.168.1.1' > /etc/hosts
I use openDNS. The only problem you will run into is if you do not have a static IP. They have software that will update your ip address on their site but I am not sure if they have a linux version.
I admin a private school and have used Squid and SquidGuard with success. There are a couple of sites that provide the updated blacklists for just about everything. However, a blacklist will not stop everything. You have the ability to set the filtering and access to the internet by time limit as well. For the school, I only allow access to the internet during school hours. After hours only the teachers can get out. A friend of mine uses IPCop on his home system, it's basically SquidGuard, but installs a basic linux system with the proxy as the main app.
Privoxy
http://www.privoxy.org
I'm a fan of the following (in order of importance):
1. Open education and discussion. Talk with them about their browsing habits and what the expectations (and consequences) are for what is acceptable or not.
3. Though every child/family is different, I think having the computer(s) in a public place does a multitude of good.
4. Avoid double-standards. If you can browse to sites that they are not allowed to go to, it will only create "forbidden fruit" and they'll just end up going there anyways.
5. Adblock is good in general to keep unwanted content away.
6. DNS-based solutions (ie: OpenDNS).
Use technology as a parental tool, not a replacement.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
Any parent who gives a young child unsupervised access to the Internet, filters or no, is irresponsible.
Unfortunately this generation of parent wants to turn their kids loose on the internet, with cable TV, etc, and reserve the right to bitch to the government about regulating them down to a form that is appropriate for them.
I don't have children, but if I ever do, the computers won't be in bedrooms unless they have no internet connectivity.
Corporatism != Free Market
Honestly, I don't know why you waited until she noticed "hot guys" for the birds and the bee talk. Sex is easy to explain. It's something people do, for many reasons, and with many possible consequences: pleasure, reproduction, diseases, money. It happens between two or more people, and everything that happens is entirely between them. There is no right or wrong way to do it, as long as everybody consents.
It's relationships that are hard to explain. Confusion about relationships leads to warped ideas about sex and what it means, not the other way around.
After all, I am strangely colored.
If she's over 12, make sure she knows everything possible there is to know about sex. How pregnancy occurs, common birth control methods, how many abortions you can have before not being able to give birth, "pulling out" is not OK, the most prevalent STDs, their infection methods, rates, and symptoms, and how to avoid bad situations. (Don't make out with some drunk dude at a party.) Oh and show her videos of teen mom's lives.
Knowledge is power. The more she learns about sex, the more likely she is to be safe and have a normal sex life.
I don't think it's ever been done.
http://www.itssafe4.me/
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
The best filter is education, there is no filter that replace it.
Eventually it will appears with any filter and good education remains.
Even though my two children grew up in the 1990s when things were considerably more innocent, I recognized the potential threats to them from unfettered access to the Internet. As a Linux guy you have some advantages that Windows people either don't have at all or must pay for.
First of all, do not put a computer in a child's room where the door can be closed and your supervision over them is reduced. It's your job as a parent to keep them safe until they are sophisticated enough to know how to do that on their own. A "family" computer in the play room or living room installed so that you can look at the screen easily is the best way to keep them safe.
I use Linux as the border router for my home systems and this gives you a leg up on the predators because you can use sniffers like Nast to actually monitor their keystrokes. I found that all I had to do was demonstrate this once to have a lasting effect. I told my son that I could read every letter he typed. He didn't believe me. I asked him to type something to a friend on Yahoo and, from another room, I read it back to him. I didn't have to keep monitoring him... all that was needed was for him to know that I could.
Another time my wife and I were on vacation in California and our almost-18 son was home. I logged into the router, then logged into the music computer (also Linux) and started playing mp3s in my computer room. I turned up the volume. Then Mom called him on the phone. "How do you turn it down?" was his first question. Again, it demonstrated that there was supervision even when we were not there in person. Plus it was noon... time for him to get his ass out of bed and mow the lawn. LOL
Finally, I used Squid and periodically grepped the access.log for the seven words you can't say on television. When I found a site they should not be going to I denied it in the access lists.
I do not consider any of this to have been undue scrutiny or spying. I really never bothered to monitor keystrokes after that one demonstration. And both of my kids grew up, went to college, avoided all the serious pitfalls of growing up, and are contributing members of society. My son is now my partner in our network engineering firm.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
What mean "we", Kemosabe?
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
I'd bet a sound analysis of how our wonderful economic system works (like how the music industry finds and promotes talent) would do quite a bit to turn kids away from the neatly packaged rebellion that is pushed down their throats, as well as turn them away from the moronic stuff that is advertised to them starting from infancy.
I think that might be a little deep for the "I know he likes me, but does he like me like me" crowd.
Rather than spending any time or money on highly flawed technological solutions, spend that time and energy on laying down realistic boundaries for her, and instilling her with a solid sense of right and wrong. Back that up with removing any internet access for infractions. Oh, and if you're entertaining any delusions that you're going to be able to completely shield her from outside influences and keep her completely pure and untainted? Give that idea up right now, unless you're planning on keeping her locked in the basement and totally homeschooling her until she's an adult, because it's impossible. The best you can do is to prepare her for the real world and what it's going to throw at her, and not be too devastated if she doesn't turn out like you hoped she would.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Tragedy today as former President Gerald Ford was eaten by wolves. He was delicious.
Sent from your iPad.
K9 Web filter from BlueCoat is the best home filter I've seen...
I have combined a majority of the items discussed here. Here is what I have for a setup Qwest DSL with my IPCop as the DMZ. IPCop is running 1.4.21 with Advanced Proxy/Urlfilter/SysInfo/OpenVPN/Calamaris/Update Accelerator with 4 network cards. Red = Internet, Green = Internal Network, Blue = Wireless w/WRT54G running DD-WRT, and Orange as the DMZ. I then download the blacklist from urlblacklist.com and upload it to the URL Filter. I think have Firefox running AdBlock Plus, Noscript, and it always clears personal data when you exit. Granted this is a bit over kill but it is very easy to setup and maintain after you have it setup. You will need Putty or another SSH client and WinSCP for file transfers. The small and cheap box I have running IPCop is purchased for around $250 to $300 at logicsupply.com. Parts List: 1) Jetway NC92-330-LF Dual Core Atom Mini-ITX Mainboard 1.6 GHz dual core Intel Atom 330 processor with fan. Features support for Jetway's signature add-on expansion modules and it has 2 SATA (3 Gb/sec.) connectors, Gb LAN, 2 RS-232 COM support, and PCI. Excellent solution for a wide range of applications. 2) Jetway 3x 1Gb LAN Module Provides three additional 10/100/1000 LAN ports for the Jetway J7F2WE-, J7F3E-, J7F5M-, and NC92-series mainboards. (10/100 module is $20 cheaper) 3) Emphase 44-pin Industrial Flash Disk Module 2 GB - 4000X Plugs directly into a 44-pin notebook style IDE port. The FDM 4000X has fast read/write speeds (Read-40 MB/sec., Write-20 MB/sec.), increased performance, and long-life support. 4)Morex 5677 Mini-ITX Case Super-compact Mini-ITX case with disguised appearance. Has built-in mounting brackets and an internal 2.5" HDD tray. (Need USB CD Rom to install from CD) I already had one. (After setup this box can be headless) 5) Setup the IPCop box and setup your DNS to OpenDNS 6) Configure Adv Proxy and Urlfiltering and upload the blacklist form urlblacklist.com 7) You can also configure filters on OpenDNS 8) Install Firefox with AdBlock Plus/NoScript www.ipcop.org www.urlfilter.net www.advproxy.net update-accelerator.advproxy.net calamaris.advproxy.net www.ipadd.de/binary.html (Sysinfo and other Addons) Granted this is not and ideal how to but there is plenty of how to articles out there and the software has pretty good docs to. Thanks, BG
It's rare that I win the race to say something first on the internet. I am soooo proud today.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
You could always move there... they have such a secret list in the works, that even though it isn't even implemented yet, people get threatened with $11000 a day in fines, just for having a link! Best of all there is no way for them to know that the link is even considered illegal until the threat of a fine comes!
I haven't had any porn ads, ever.
What kind of websites is your daughter going to??
Keep the computer in a high trafic area of the house. Say right next to the kitchen with the screen facing out.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Your daughter is going to be bombarded by sex from all directions. She'll get it at school, on TV, movies, from friends (and "friends"), and, yes, the Internet. Strict filtering at home just means the neighbor's unfiltered Internet is all the more enticing. Talk to your kids about what it is, what they're seeing, why it's out there, and make it cease to be a "naughty" attraction, and an unfiltered Internet should cease to be a problem. If your kids want to see "forbidden" content, they're going to figure out a way to do it. The biggest thing is having an open dialog about what your kids are seeing and learning. I'd rather my kids talk to me about what they read on some white supremacist site than keep that information from me because they thought they'd be in trouble, since it was filtered.
You're advice is tragically underrated. And though I don't have kids yet, it is inline with experiences of my friends and acquaintances in high school 15 years ago.
I'm not sure what the development on this has been since 2006 but when I was an admin at a K-12 school we used this as our primary filter. It was very effective and simple to setup. When kids were legitimately researching topics on , say, human sexuality, etc. for various grade 10-12 courses it was no trouble to unblock specific sites or even whole domains.
I haven't seen a porn advertisement that wasn't already on a porn site for years now.
Just install adblock plus and set it to get regular updates of its filter list.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
woo :)
Wait til little girl starts clicking on every virus-ridden web page she sees. Wait til she defends her actions by saying, "But I really wanted to play that game, and I had to click OK to play it."
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Every good product is actually just a lie the customer wants to hear.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
My daughter is using phrases like 'hot guys,' and soon will have a chat about the birds and the bees
Since there isn't always a clear red flag to let you know the absolute last minute you can put that conversation off, you should get it out of the way when the time is approaching. Procrastination here is not a good thing.
By the time my parents worked up the nerve, my school had already provided me with good sex-ed. I think in some respects I knew more than they did, which was kinda funny. Correcting your parents during this chat just makes them turn different shades of red and purple. Not many schools do that though, but if you wait too long you too may get to experience that.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I've been meaning to set one up upstream of my home router now that my kids are getting bigger. I think there are a number of elementary schools using it. Seems like it would be easy to set up and run off of anything modern enough to run the 2.6.x kernel.
You, and other parental figures in the child's life, are the best filter. There are no acceptable technological substitutes, and there probably never will be.
I remember a search engine off shoot of yahoo. Their only purpose was making the search results kid friendly. Its not really a censor, but it stops the accidental exposure. I think it was called yahooligans. I don't know if it exists anymore though. If you just made it your daughters home page it would subtly promote safer surfing.
I like IPCop as a webfilter. It can be installed and configured on an old computer in about 30mins. (not counting the time it takes you to download and burn the iso). The default install keeps a log of all web URLs visited. Add the URL Filter to block certain web sites. Of course maintaining a black list is a pain in the arse but there are plenty of free blacklists available that are designed to be used in elementary schools. As a side benefit you can use also use it to block ads, and filter malware with cop filter.
But which site hosts "aggressive porn ads" that isn't already a porn site? It seems like this is a complete non-issue. Is it the porn sites you're trying to block, or the ads for them? (Or the ads *on* them?)
I'm confused.
Comment of the year
Setup a PFSense firewall (www.pfsense.com) and install the squidguard package and a good blacklist like shallalist (www.shallalist.de/)
Then tell squidguard to block all ad and porn sites.
Troll me but this is another example of a lazy parent wanting someone else to do their job for them.
A: TURN THE COMPUTER OFF. Life moves along just fine without Facebook, Myspace, and Google. A computer is a TOOL not a life style.
B: As several have pointed out, keep the computer in the living room and check out what they are doing. If they are embarrassed by you looking over their shoulder just remind them that everything they do on the internet can be observed by millions. If you are embarrassed by mom or dad watching, you'd be insaine not to be embarrassed by millions seeing it.
C: Filter? Why? Get a porn pop up just close it... Ohhh scary images... Filters will do little when people are 1/2 naked walking around in malls during the summer.
D: Linux based filter? I suggest either M.O.R.A.L Code or the effective P.A.R.E.N.T Script. But using both together you can actually control your child AND their internet surfing habits. You see, when agressive scripts with objectionable content pop up with both M.O.R.A.L code and P.A.R.E.N.T scripts running you child can simple close the offending content or in circumstances where they are unable to the M.O.R.A.L and P.A.R.E.N.T tools actually allow your worthless waste of oxygen code named CHILD to actually peel themselves away from the stupid box long enough for P.A.R.E.N.T to clean up the situation provided the P.A.R.E.N.T script isn't too busy acting like an adult child buried in ESPN or an XBOX.
Here some advice, be a parent and quit delegating your responsibilities to EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE ELSE BESIDES YOURSELF. IF YOU CANNOT KEEP TABS ON YOUR CHILD AT ALL TIMES STOP POPPING THEM OUT LIKE FUCKING PEZ CANDY.
-- Version 1 --
Face it there are always be assholes in the world, learning to tolerate them is part of life. You don't have to like assholes but you do need to learn how to deal with assholes when they pop up.
-- Version 2 --
Face it there are always be p0rn popups in the world, learning to tolerate them is part of life. You don't have to like p0rn popups but you do need to learn how to deal with p0rn popups when they pop up.
-- Version 3 --
Face it there are always be objectional content in the world, learning to tolerate them is part of life. You don't have to like objectional content but you do need to learn how to deal with objectional content when they pop up.
If the OPs goal is to let the kid explore, let the kid learn how to deal with objectional content.
Morals + Good Parenting = Self Policing Kids that Listen to their Parent.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
I think a combination of parental guidance and Dan's Guardian.
http://dansguardian.org/
I have DG working on my W2k3 server with Virtual Box and Unbuntu.
As a Father with a younger daughter I have very fundamental issues with having few boundaries on the internet. Especially for girls entering pre-pre sexual stages of their life.
Whether you like it or not, she will be exposed to very undesirable models of women in society in very un-prnographic, but still titillating images. If she watches a normal amount of TV, then she's being rushed along enough sexually. It reinforces the sexual hysteria that is so prevalent in the U.S.
I'm all for age-appropriate normalizing of sex topics, but less filtered internet access is not the way to achieve it.
Before flaming away at me she's probably getting enough exposure to peer-appropriate pre-pre sexual things in school. Hopefully, Right now its all a very immature kind of pubescent theater. That's enough and it hopefully is age-appropriate.
For those reasons I'm in favor of tight controls on the home Internets/IM until very late teens.
Flame away.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
As others have said, I have quite good experience with Adblock. If nothing else, it makes the Internet experience more pleasant.
For me, the most important point is that the kids have their computers in the "family office". They've never tried to visit anything really objectionable, but it has happened that they wandered onto sites that I found inappropriate. I wouldn't necessarily have noticed this if their computers were in their rooms, or even by looking at logs. As it was, it was one of those "teachable" moments.
Of course, as they get older, they have more and more access to mobile devices. By the time this could be a problem, I hope to have taught them well enough to behave responsibly.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
You don't need to worry much about girls downloading porn. It's slashfic you should fear. buwhahaha!
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I use DansGuardian. Easy to configure and works fine (I use it conjunction with squidproxy, both running on the firewall between the DMZ and inside the house).
Occasionally I'll go in and configure it to block Flash (except for certain sites, like the kids' schools) to discourage playing flash games when they should be doing homework. If one really wanted, one could configure a cron script to modify the configs at different times of the day (I don't think dansguardian config files are smart enough to do that themselves), but I haven't bothered.
Since only the kids' computers go through DG, (that's in the firewall config) if I want to cut them off from the internet in a hurry I can just kill that, leaving the rest of the computers on the net.
I don't know about other filters -- I tried DG first and it was Good Enough -- but if they do try to hit a blocked site it will pop up a page (configurable) telling them to ask Daddy if it's something they really need access to.
-- Alastair
Just ask her to tell you about anything she finds strange or distressing, talk to her about it openly and draw conclusions together.
In other words educate her.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I have the answer. I saved my family all the trouble by taking my old x86 box, downloading the Astaro free home user version, which gives you all their web filtering free, no sales people, no strings. Takes 2 secs to get a key, and i repurposed an old 1.5ghz box with a 40gb hdd i had laying around.
Since i was happy with my linksys etc setup, i just put it in bridged transparent mode and stopped the bad categories (they have like 90+) from being doled out to the kids computers IP addresses. No need for user authentication yet, i hope they dont get that smart :) (though it does support it)
key: http://www.astaro.com/our_products/product_overview/landing_pages/free_home_edition
iso: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v7/software_appliance/iso/
ta heck with your glasses, where are my teeth?!? I know you hid them on me... /geezer reality
Get an old computer and install smoothwall3.0 and then install the dansguardian mod for it http://community.smoothwall.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=28154
If you don't have an old computer or want to save space then for about $150 you can get this small alix board plus case plus power supply: http://www.mini-box.com/Alix-2B0-Board-2-LAN-2-MINI-PCI_LX700_2
Ok, I don't have any kids, nor are any planned, so with that out of the way:
I don't see why you need anything special for kids. Aggressive porn ads is probably something you filter out for yourself as well, so your usual combination of AdBlock, Popup blocker enabled, etc. will do. With that setup, it is very, very likely that your daughter won't see any porn ads she didn't want to see, just like you. And any that still slip through would've almost certainly slipped through another setup as well.
As for the "think of the chiiiiiildren" content - my personal belief is that hiding that away would do great damage to the kid anyways, no matter what the age. I strongly believe that if you are willing to take the time to talk about and explain whatever it is she finds on the web, be it the sourcecode for the Linux USB driver or hardcore porn, you'll do her a much bigger favour.
Time and time again I notice that the parents that are the most restrictive are the ones who have the least interest and time for their kids. They somehow live in this dream world where they think their job as parents is to protect the kid, and that's it. Frankly, that notion is about 100,000 years outdated. Our kids won't be eaten by wolves if we don't watch them, but the gene is still there. In the modern world, kids need guidance a lot more than protection, because them not knowing what a pyramid scheme is or that alcohol should be consumed in moderation is a lot more dangerous than them knowing all about sex at age six.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Disclosure: I have friends who work for this company. They do offer commercial products but also have a free service which performs web filtering. Look, evaluate, and make up your own mind. http://www.bluecoat.com/products/overview
I used to work on POESIA several times ago (I actually even initiated it as an R&D project). It is opensource (GPL). I don't work on it anymore, and I don't know if there is still some usable code. But one could try http://www.poesia-filter.org/ and more importantly http://sourceforge.net/projects/poesia/ My youngest child is 12 years old. I believe the most important filter is to have him surf the web in the living room. (He sometimes uses a netbook, but I disabled the wifi & ethernet)
Install a filter, give her the password to it. Anything unwanted she can safely ignore. If she really meant to go there in the first place, she can type in the password to continue.
Why would you need filtering for a girl? Frankly girls aren't like guys and they are not going to go crazy for porn. Girls are not as sex crazed as guys are and they aren't going to be looking through porn all day. The worst they can do is spend way too much time on facebook and myspace....those things are like girl venus flytraps.
But if you don't want her to see porn advertising (and frankly who does?) than just install adblock in firefox. No need for filtering and all that.
Trust me, frankly the worst she is going to do is look up the actors from twilight, Hanah Montana, and the Jonas Brothers...that surely won't scar her for life xD....although it would probably scar me for life.
My mom and i had a talk when i was 12 and then 16 regarding this. Our situation was a little odd but it worked. We here having a preteen argument, prolly about porn or something, and she said that she knew she didn't understand computers well enough to control me and that anything she put on there would most likely be subverted. She didnt know jack about technology and thats all i cared about. she just kind of worked the mysterious internal "you're disappointing mother" guilt. but i still was everywhere. i mastered stealth thumbnail viewing and anime porn(lol i was little) by then too but i kept it a private matter. i knew all the shock to the degree they didn't shock me.
But what made it all okay, was a convo we had one night that i can still visualize. i was just getting into anime and didn't know what to rent or how to tell if one was good or not so i would just rent a vhs every couple weeks. This time, she got a movie and so did i. her's ended up being cool so i watched it with her. this led to her just sticking the second tape in and sitting back down.
Now, back then anime wasn't rated at the rental shops and it was before they had the 13^, 14^, 16^, and 18^ labels on the back. So i ended up with a flashy boxed vhs called Ninja Scroll.... XD 3 minutes into that movie a woman is violently raped by a monster with a massive hoo-hoo-dilly.
I knew it was coming cause i saw the big guy grab the chick so i had actually pretended to go to the bathroom and hid in my room. :P She gave me this stern ass talk about not objectifying women and how they aren't just sex tools and so on. i can still hear it in my head today. ive wacked my badger every day since i was 12, typically visually aided, and i have no respect or sexual expectation problems as an older male.
I used a plugin for firefox called Glubble when my kids were younger, it has great family controls, and allows different profiles for different kids. They can build their own favourites pages and if they want to go to a site not listed, it sends a link to a "Helper" such as a named parent or guardian, this can even be an email to your work address if like mine they are being looked after by a sitter after school while I am at work. They can also share allowed links with their friends if they sign up for glubble too, and these also get approved by their helpers.
But nothing compares to making sure the internet access PC is in a family space, and logins are restricted to certain times. I must admit, OS X is fantastic as it allows to to set maximum hours per day as well, so with two kids it makes sure they both get a turn and arne't spending all day on the net - also as I use the Mac as their TV, it limits their TV/DVD time too. Does anyone know of a good login manager that can add this funtionality to Linux?
I'd guess you are a geek and may actually have a network already setup in your house. Grab an old computer (Dumpster diving, go through your own stuff and put one together or goodwill) and install IPCop. Then install URL Filter which uses squid. The added benefit of having a secure firewall that blocks, porn, ads, trackers, spyware and just about anything else you could imagine.
I currently use this system in my own house and at my current job. It's not perfect. Any person who REALLY wants to get at something can. It does however cause a lot less problems.
Side Note: Am I the only one who searches for motherboard models and the first site listed by Google has Adult Friend Finder adds? That's enough for me to install that software.
I would say install a system "dan's guardian?" that will display a notice, but give an option to bypass a filter (logging the fact it was bypassed, of course). This prevents the "sex thrown in her face" issue, while letting her make her own decisions about her internet use. (and takes care of issues where a wikipedia article or something like that is blocked)
My kids, although they do not know what an "SLA" is, are keenly aware of the concepts. At any given time, their computers are scanned for spyware, viruses, and their Internet history is checked. Temporary Internet files are manually verified. They do not have admin rights. The computers are in a common area. They have been told and reminded that the presence on any inappropriate material means the immediate wiping of their computers. I use Windows for them, but one kid is familiar with Linux (the machine dual-boots) and likes it. I use McAfee and parental controls. However, the best tools are your own diligence and vigilence. Do not leave them in a closed bedroom. Keep the computers in the open areas. Although there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in our home, one a computer is not one area where there is. I realize your question is on Linux, but parental oversight runs on any operating system.
I would love to see her daughter's face when she googles hot guys, and ends up with an unending slew of pop up IE windows from surfing to the first hit, www.hotguys4you.com and notices that there is much more insinuations for the male demographic then the female one..... especially when she clicks to see the first picture that pops up!
It's the only way to guarantee clean-room quality breathability.
>question is: What Linux-based Internet filtering solution do Slashdot dads favor, and do they hinder a child's efforts to learn about the world?
OK I am still recovering from this one.... "....Slashdot dads....."
You must be new here......
Thanks for the laugh.....
My kids are 6 & 9 - I'm running ProCon, a Firefox add-on which lets you create blacklists & whitelists. I just blacklisted everything except about 10 sites (Schools Wikipedia, Webkinz, etc). If there's something else they want to look at, I can add it. They could circumvent it by using Konqueror, but haven't worked that out yet. Right now, there's no need for them to be visiting any other sites, and as they get older I'll change the setup, but for now it's easy and effective.
My son (now 12) is just getting to the porn age so I'm going to have to be a little more vigilant with him. The issue that he had a couple years ago was interesting though. He would see the ads or find a free offer or contest and would believe every word (but not read the fine print). We had to have several EXPLANATIONS with him that they weren't really going to send him a free XBOX360 or anything else for free or that he didn't win that contest. He gets it now but it wasn't easy.
Never too early to start teaching them that being a sheep is bad. And what is advertizing but telling the sheep what to think since they're incapable of forming opinions on their own.
SquidGuard
It's what I use at home for my kids. No, it's not perfect, but along with some good URL re-write rules, you can't get to any porn unless you REALLY try.
'Impossible' is a word that humans use far too often. -- Seven of Nine
IPCop + URLFilter
Put out by Phantom Technologies.
http://residential.iphantom.com/
Simple!!!
A proxy program as Squid http://www.squid-cache.org/ with squidguard http://www.squidguard.org/ and a black list as http://www.shallalist.de/categories.html
True, but there are two issues with that...
#1) It might never be to early to teach them that being a sheep is bad, but a "sound analysis of our economic system" just might be jumping the gun.
#2) You've got to be careful of crossing the line into "telling them what to think since they're incapable of forming opinions on their own".
oh any filters are fine...I just don't let my kids smoke the UNfilterd stuff...
The internet, much like the real world is not a safe place for kids. It's not even a safe place for adults most of the time. Probably more dangerous since most kids don't do their banking online, instead relying on Snoopy coin banks.
You cannot 'blacklist' through configuration parts of the internet, your best chance is to whitelist what you think is 'ok' and just block everything else at your firewall to and from that computer. Heavy handed? Sure. But it's the only reliable way. Unrealistic? Definitely!
Also, talk to your kids, educate them about WHY things are bad, don't be afraid to let them find out on their own. Forbidden apples taste pretty good.
The type of parent that lets their kid freely roam around on the internet is the same type of parent that will drop their kid off at Chuck-E-Cheese and say 'I'll be back when I'm done with what I'd rather be doing'. If you don't care enough to supervise, don't act surprised when they do a bunch of stuff that horrifies you.
The worst thing you could possibly do is to try and block her attempts to get to content she really wants to get to.
However blocking accidental is really easy: remove IE if you haven't already, install Firefox if you haven't already and get the Ad Block Plus addon and subscribe to the EasyList USA blacklist. Ads.. what are ads?
now... just be honest and straight up with her about the birds and the bees.. and if she wants to look at stuff.. well she is going to look at stuff. It's not unhealthy, despite what our unhealthy prudish sexually-repressive culture wants to say.
(OMG! my 10 year old saw a titty on a movie! he's going to be a mass murderer now!)
Caveat: I am not a parent YET, but don't expect to change my opinions on this by the time i have kids of that age.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
If FF3 is pulling from your past browsing history, you need to use whatever beta has the 'porn mode' or the Distrust add-on.
4chan.org
You know, every now and then I forget why I eschew commenting on Slashdot for the deep philosophical discussions on the WoW forums.
And every now and then, I get a reminder.
No Longer a Menace to Society.
Alexandria Morrigan born 2/22/01 l. 20.5in wt. 7 lbs. 5 oz.
Based on a quick google search and perusal of your recent slashdot comments, all I can tell about you is that you watch the sci-fi channel, play video games, and only have seven friends on facebook. What is it that differentiates you from the "sheep" you seem to hold in such contempt?
Use opendns.com as your DNS provider. I do this to filter ads and popups. It works with any Internet connected device from PCs to iPod Touch.
DansGuardian, without question. OpenDNS is good too but not Linux-based.
If there were no God, there would be no atheists. -- G.K. Chesterton
This way she only sees the porn she's trying to look at, which is how it should be.
You should be more concerned with your daughter sending naked pictures of herself to "hot guys". Since the guy is almost certainly going to show it off, she will almost certainly be charged with child pornography. Certainly as a parent it's your job to protect your daughter from falling prey to legal judgments that could end her life as a member of society.
Don't get me wrong. I think this is a perfectly reasonable thing for a parent to do. However, I also think one should be honest about whether this is really for the child's benefit or for the parent's benefit.
Look, when children are young enough that they are really just "accidentally" stumbling upon this content they are grossed out and quickly navigate away. They don't understand the subtlties of "objectification" (horrible word) or psychological degradation that cause adults to feel queasy about alot of porn nor are they going to spend any time looking at it. It just doesn't seem reasonable that kids at this age are likely to need protection from accidental porn exposure. Sure, it would be bad to sit them down to watch an hour of violent porn but that's not accidental exposure.
On the other hand once they are old enough that they find the subject enticing it's no longer really about accidental visits and they are (or shortly will be) sharing racy material with their friends (be it stolen playboys, sex books in the public library, or fairly racy sexual stories told among female friends...I was pretty astonished to here my wife tell me what she talked about at 13).
What this sort of policy does avoid is having to have awkward talks with the kid about what they saw (though the awkwardness usually comes from the parent's hangups rather than anything intrinsic). It also helps indulge the (perhaps necessery) fantasy all parents indulge in about their children's innocence.
Nothing wrong with that. In fact I think this often encourages harmony and healthy development. There is nothing like a guilty/prudish/anxious parent to induce sexual hangups.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
You can setup Untangle as a passthrough or as your router. There's no crappy software to install, all network traffic can be screened and logged, there is an override function and best of all its free.
Nuclear war would really set back cable. - Ted Turner
terms like "Hot Guys" you probably should be having that talk sooner rather than later. Just my 2cents.
Well the solution seems obvious to me, she should be using Lynx.
In my experience, most of the inappropriate images and links are banner ads on legitimate websites (if you could call thepiratebay legitimate), so the firefox plugin 'adblock plus' is all I use for my family.
It's not very difficult...
http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Main_Page
OpenDNS - This is the easiest to configure. Setup your internet connection to use the OpenDNS servers, and then do some base filtering on the really bad stuff. Block specific domains if you want, and/or use the built in blacklists.
Squid - This is a proxy filter. It can do a lot of things, but mostly it is use by the next few things to do what you want:
DansGuardian - A truly excellent content filter, with weighted lists if you like. Want to allow "Brest Cancer" but not just "Brest"? It can do that. Very powerful, but also takes some work to do.
AdZapper - Does what it sounds like: It stops Advertisements. Truly a great way to trim the net of the waste. ... and to do all these things, I recommend ...
ClarkConnect. It's a linux based firewall which can do all this and a whole lot more. Free and Paid versions available. Others will suggest different programs, this is just the one I'm using.
I use clarkconnect server gateway at my house it's is an linux distro, it has a great content filter in it's proxy server, this would be one way. gooeee
Collaborative filter plugin for Firefox... lots of dads working together to repel the barbarians at the gates, so to speak.
It says for children under 12; I'm not sure when girls start talking about "hot guys"...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5881
I have a plan. Using mainly spoons, we'll tunnel our way out of the city...
Your daughter has already seen Goatse and Tubgirl. There is no innocence left to save. You have already failed.
on.nimp.org
It shows you what its going to filter.
the same filter you use when you let her go out into the 'bad' areas of the city alone and unsupervised? After all, in general the tubes are safer than those areas. Oh what? You don't let her go to strange places alone and unsupervised?
I tend to agree with the part about not filtering children's access to the world. I just have to wonder what you were thinking when you wrote "However, it's not fair for aggressive porn advertisers to splash sex in her face without her permission". Maybe you should first find out if the aggressive porn advertisements occur and if those actually irritate anybody beyond aggressive non-porn advertisements. If not then this is a problem of aggressive advertising in general and not porn. At which point you probably want software to block aggressive advertising rather than porn sites.
When my daughter was 10, she woke me up in the middle of the night crying. We had watched Disney's Mulan-- cartoon about a Chinese girl-- and that night she went on the Internet without permission and found an "Asian Girls!" porn site that was pretty graphic. She said "Why do they let this happen to themselves? Don't they know they have a beautiful culture?"
We talked and talked that night. I told her how glad I was that she came to me with such questions. And as expected her curiosity was roused. She would later go looking up various porn sites, eventually getting one of those Trojans that had our computer silently dialing up some Soviet state and running up a phone bill of over $1000 because it stayed online in the background, all because she so easily signed in as "Over 18."
We refused to pay that bill and the phone company finally conceded because I quoted some legal precedent I found online and because I was articulate and talked tough.
So, get ready for anything. Your best defense really IS being able to talk to your kid, checking her browser history, etc. I suggest that, when you are telling her about sex, you find legitimate sex-ed web sites for her that are appropriate to her age-- they are out there. That will give her something to look at when she gets curious and kids need access to healthy imagery because the most important message I think they need is that porn sex is not real sex. (I know some smart mouth out there will make a crack about "real, etc.," but little girls do not need to imagine porn scenarios when wondering what it will be like to grow up and make babies.
My kid would later comment about the porn sites that she visited:
"Those girls all have on that 'commercial face' they have when they lie down on cars or advertise toothpaste-- 'Yum! It tastes minty fresh!'-- WHY?"
Why, indeed?
Just keep talking to your kid. And make sure she also knows some other adult she can go to with questions too embarrassing to ask you, probably a female." Good luck and thank you for caring about your kid in this way.
You wanna see bad? Consider the alternative: mitosis! How disgusting would it be to walk down the street and see some fat guy spontaneously split into TWO fat guys?!
OK, I was obviously raised more liberal. Because I was in fact told that if I ever smoked weed to smoke it through a water bong, so as to avoid the tar!!
Here's the funny thing . . . except for a lot of second-hand smoke in college, I never did weed.
I was told about condoms and sex very young. And I didn't get nekked and teh seXXX until age 20.
Life happens. And sex is a big part of multicellular life.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
For a small fee you can subscribe to our proprietary whitelisting system - it simply tracks down every male at every IP your computer system interacts with and sends a gentleman of our acquaintance with the middle-name "The" to the residence associated with the IP.
If they're whitelisted, we simply break their kneecaps.
We've had very few complaints.
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
One solution to that comes to mind, if you want to get rid of invasive ads is:
http://adzapper.sourceforge.net/
There are easier ways to implement this but, I just remembered this URL.
Just move to Australia and let Senator Conroy do it for you as he tries to go one better than the Great Internet Wall of China!
White list, default deny for the win. It's only rough for a little while.
There is no better way than to keep the banners from popping up in the first place...
As well if you lock your firewall down, there's no way for her to go some place you don't allow.
It's not about being KGB on your kid, it's about not letting harmful stuff into your network.
My network is unmonitored, and I don't stand over my kids shoulder (figuratively speaking), but I do know that any source of content coming into my network has been approved by me.
Before anyone tells me this can be bypassed with a proxy, be aware that I have to approve the proxy for it to work ;)
-Viz
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
I use a fantastic open source firewall/content filter called ClarkConnect. It's content filter based on DansGuardian works fantastically and it is easy enough for my wife to manage. The community edition is free and open source and uses a web interface.
OpenDNS and Squid with a blacklist. This is what I use on my own home network to keep my less sophisticated family members "safer" on the internet.
I didn't bother reading all the (600+) replies so far because the first few were typically just a bunch of jokers looking for attention. So apologies if what I post now hasn't already been said.
You haven't said what age your daughter is and presumably she's heterosexual. Also, are you her father or mother? Whatever the case, I think it's important that you remember that you were a kid once too.
I think that the most important 'filter' when it comes to deciding what your kids should see/read/hear/talk about isn't some arbitrary set of rules drawn up by someone else, whether that person is a priest, a politician, a judge or the owner of an ISP. It's yourself.
It has been said that we don't own our children (very true), but we are the guardians of them for society. I don't entirely agree with that last part because it implies that once they become 'adults' (as in: whatever legal or socially determined threshold makes them independent of you and suddenly responsible for themselves) they should be handed over to that society's will. Which could be conscription, indentured servitude, arranged marriage, legal requirement, body mutilation, anything.
I think that the most serious parenting problems kids and their parents have are not pornography, violence, or career choices - but FEAR and IGNORANCE.
You Don't Know What To Do and You Are Afraid.
Try this: You are worried about your daughter getting hassled by aggressive porn spammers but (apparently) you don't mind her talking sexually about boys. So explain to her what the porn industry is really all about. That it's a large business that sells sex movies for entertainment. And for example, show her 'The Annabelle Chong Story' and 'Ron Jeremy: Porn Star'. (To my mind, films every kid should see.)
Kids aren't stupid, they're just the noobs of life. So once you teach her that the worst problem with those arsehole porn spammers is that they use you, waste your bandwidth and try to put trojans on your PC, she'll probably lose interest in porn they way that girls usually lose interest in society queens after they've been mocked on Facebook for not being pretty or rich enough.
So given some good advice by someone she can trust, your daughter should be a lot more confident and more inclined to come to you for advice later on.
One more point: one of the earlier posters replied that you should just put the PC in the living room. Stupid stupid move. Teenagers need privacy. It's because they need to explore their sense of self and make decisions about their lives ON THEIR OWN TERMS. As you were a teenager once, you should remember this.
Don't insult your daughter's intelligence and give her reason to believe that anything you say is bogus.
Hope I've helped.
Why does OpenDNS do this? Doesn't this bring them humungous(/humongous?) amounts of traffic (that I can't imagine how they would monetize)?
I come here for the love
A while back i used IPcop (http://www.ipcop.org/) It is basically a Linux firewall with alot of neat stuff attached to it. Works with ADSL/Cable/PPPoe ect. You might want to look at the proxy configuration. You may also need an addon that will filter what you want. The addon is updated daily and it will block those sites you don't want your child to visit. Very easy to setup and use. I also like the POP3 Proxy, this will scannall incomming e-mail and filter junk mail.
Good Bloody Cripes!!
Can't ANYONE here answer the single question posed?
http://dansguardian.org/
Give it a shot.