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Ask Slashdot: Parental Content Control For Free OSs?
m.alessandrini writes Children grow up, and inevitably they will start using internet and social networks, both for educational and recreational purposes. And it won't take long to them to learn to be autonomous, especially with all the smartphones and tablets around and your limited time. Unlike the years of my youth, when internet started to enter our lives gradually, now I'm afraid of the amount of inappropriate contents a child can be exposed to unprepared: porn, scammers, cyberbullies or worse, are just a click away.
For Windows many solutions claim to exist, usually in form of massive antivirus suites. What about GNU/Linux? Or Android? Several solutions rely on setting up a proxy with a whitelist of sites, or similar, but I'm afraid this approach can make internet unusable, or otherwise be easy to bypass. Have you any experiences or suggestions? Do you think software solutions are only a part of the solution, provided children can learn hacking tricks better than us, and if so, what other 'human' techniques are most effective?
For Windows many solutions claim to exist, usually in form of massive antivirus suites. What about GNU/Linux? Or Android? Several solutions rely on setting up a proxy with a whitelist of sites, or similar, but I'm afraid this approach can make internet unusable, or otherwise be easy to bypass. Have you any experiences or suggestions? Do you think software solutions are only a part of the solution, provided children can learn hacking tricks better than us, and if so, what other 'human' techniques are most effective?
The best trick is for parents to actually supervise their children.
I hate all you lazy buggers who just "plug the kids in" and leave them for hours a day unsupervised. Do your damned job as parents!
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The right way is to talk to your kids about these things. Give examples of scams, tell them there is porn, there is violence, and always, always if they feel unsure about something they should talk to you (Mostly for scams, I'm pretty sure they'll handle porn. Hell, even weird porn isn't as bad as seeing ISIS chop someones head off). Software protection is just a crutch, the real protection is education and vigilance.The right way is to talk to your kids about these things. Give examples of scams, tell them there is porn, there is violence, and always, always if they feel unsure about something they should talk to you (Mostly for scams, I'm pretty sure they'll handle porn. Hell, even weird porn isn't as bad as seeing ISIS chop someones head off). Software protection is just a crutch, the real protection is education and vigilance.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
stop trying to use technical measures to avoid parenting.
If you're going to implement any kind of technical filtering it needs to be done at the network layer, and not on the physical machine that the kids have access to. If you do it on the physical machine then they will inevitably find a way around it, even as simple as booting a livecd.
Ofcourse the key is education, this content is out there and kids will inevitably get access to it sooner or later. Whatever controls you implement on your own network or devices, the kids will either find a way to bypass them, or have access to an unfiltered network/device somewhere else. And if something is blocked, it becomes more interesting to the kids and they will actively seek out ways to get at the blocked content, whereas if it was unblocked the kids may not even have any interest in it...
A good example is alcohol, when i was in school many of the other kids in my class were forbidden from touching alcohol and that made them seek out ways to obtain alcohol... Myself and a few others were never forbidden, our parents allowed us to try alcohol if we wanted... I found alcoholic drinks tasted quite disgusting, and lost interest in them.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
By definition. And if you think about it, you'll notice why.
The "enemies" in this battle is you vs. your child. Your goal: To keep your kid from seeing stuff it's not supposed to see. Your kid's goal: To do whatever it wants and to ignore that rule you imposed.
You have finite means and finite time at your hands to implement something supposed to be blocking your child. Your child has WAY more amount of time at his or her hands (think about when they come home from school vs. when you come from work). They also have a pool of peers to draw information from, and in this pool the ability to bypass parental control is quite a bit of a status symbol, while you relying on your peers is probably not that useful since asking for help because your kids outsmart you is much but certainly NOT a status symbol.
If everything else fails, if you are really the ultimate computer guru who can lock down your kids' computers and smartphones, all they have to do is spend the day with li'l Timmy from across the street whose parents don't know jack about computers, and who can't keep Timmy (and in turn your kids) from seeing whatever they please. Which is, again, something Timmy will certainly and gladly agree to, since as stated above, outsmarting your parents and ignoring their rules is a status symbol.
In other words, the deck is stacked against you. The sensibly move is not to play.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
OpenDNS with parental control, but unless you block everything and whitelist the websites you think are safe, sooner or later they'll see a small part of what are you trying to protect them from. What are you going to do then?
Hi. If you're reasonably technically able the Sophos UTM has a great web filtering system and is free for home use. This can protect your whole network as well.
Dansguardian works well on the network level and is easy to set up and configure the degree of filtering.
Several solutions rely on setting up a proxy with a whitelist of sites, or similar, but I'm afraid this approach can make internet unusable, or otherwise be easy to bypass
Exactly like all the "solutions" on Windows.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
The other things are little more than placebos. If the kid can get to a search engine it's not going to slow them down much. A solution advocated for years has been to put the computer in a public space until you no longer care what the child looks at.
I have been using K9 for years works on, iOS, Android, OSX and windows.
http://www1.k9webprotection.com/
Windows, on the other hand has, as the author says, For Windows many solutions claim to exist, usually in form of massive antivirus suites that provide the locked-down, restricted environment that parents often think will stop their children accessing material the parents don't want them to (ha!).
So if you want to feel as if your child is "protected" then that is the way forward. At least while they are in your house, using your systems. Obviously once they go to school, to friends' or get a device of their own then none of these controls is worth a dam' any more. But that's life!
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank my father, and my friends' dads who left their porno stashes in obvious places and didn't ever bitch about it unless we took too many and didn't bring them back.
Thanks to all the cool dads out there who realized that even though we weren't 3rd world children, we should get to checkout some nudity as part of our natural adolescence -- I mean, why else would we have the interest to do so?
Also, thanks to the local BBSs which had far shittier porn, but digitized versions of The Anarchist's Cook Book, Steal This Book, and Phreaking / Hacking guides, the latter of which my parents surely would not have approved of, but without which I wouldn't have a leg-up in the lucrative career I occupy today.
In short: Fuck off parents. 3rd world kids help do the work of carrying water, collecting firewood, and butchering animals for meals at young ages while seeing nudity constantly -- Why would you want your kids to have LESS knowledge about life and less skills than children of 3rd world nations? Admit it: You don't know what's good for your kids. It's a damn good think you can't keep them from seeing anything they want online.
The key here is probably limit exposure, it cannot be fully prevented no matter what you do if they want to.
The oldest trick in the book is to only allow the youngest kids to access the Internet from a machine that is in public sight, in living room, kitchen etc. In that way, they can only watch the naughty stuff when they are alone at home, and for young kids its not very often. As they grow older, they get more alone time alone and at some point their own personal computer they can use to watch naughty pictures in privacy.
Unless you want to extend the control up until they move out, then it's complicated...
The Internet will detect any parental control as a damage and route around it.
The "solutions" on other platforms do not work, unless your children are really stupid. The only thing they do is make forbidden things a bit more interesting. One reason such systems do AFAIK not exist on Linux is that the futility of their use is rather obvious and the scam of getting money from parents for this is not attempted there.
On the other side, the dangers to kids on the Internet are vastly overblown. For example, there still is not one shred of evidence that porn is actually dangerous to children. The only reason children are "protected" from it (which does not work and has never worked) is that various religions want this. The risk of "scammers" and "cyberbullies" are easily mitigated by explaining to children how these things work. Of course a few will still fall for it, but scammers are no real risk as children have limited funds, and everybody needs to learn how to deal with bullies anyways. And what you put under "worse" is basically your imagination running wildly, not any actual problems. Just make sure your children trust you and come to you for advice if they have a problem. Using such tools may have a negative effect there, as mistrust breeds mistrust.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
There is no 100% secure solution. Knowing that, there are things that help.
I for one use OpenDNS, which blocks a lot of unwanted sites. I tried to use some other filters, but they are just annoying.
For the part that OpenDNS does not handle, I tend to stay close when they are online. But I understand you can not look over their shoulders all the time, this has nothing to do with being a bad parent.
And it is not only the internet....the streets nowadays are also full of dangers, but that does not mean we should not go outside and play.
Congrats at being a parent, it is the most difficult and time-consuming job there is, but also the most rewarding by far....
Going offline to have some quality lego-time with the kids :-)
Agreed. And no matter what he does his children will still have that access. He does't own every computer system in the world. His children will simply use other systems rather than their own, when they want to go outside the limitation system he implements.
This isn't anything new just because you throw the intertubes into the mix. It is the same problem parents have always had. How can I control my children at all times, given that there is no frigging way in hell I can ever have that kind of control?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
We had two incidents with my eldest with the myspace and facebook equivalent to bathroom graffiti.
They were resolved with a bit of DNS poisoning and a "The grounding ends as soon as you figure out how to fix it."
Now that they have smartphones, the attempt is pointless.
I think you have 2 methods here to approach the concern. .. give it a whirl.
(1) as stated by another post above, talk directly with kids and lay out terms and expectations about what is / not reasonable for how they use the internet. Don't just dictate, explain it in clear terms - not 'dictator" but "there are bad things out there, and you need to know this and be able to avoid them on your own".
(2) implement a network-level tool which blocks access carte blance in your home network. OpenDNS free works well and protects all devices in your network, doesn't matter if they are Linux, Android, iThing, Winows or other - they all use TCP, they all use DNS. So they all can be managed via DNS based control measure like OpenDNS. Very simple, easy, and free for home use so
...in Tehran or Pyongyang.
I mean it's the only way to guarantee your kids won't be accessing undesirable material, right?
Have you ever tried simply turning off the TV, sitting down with your children, and hitting them?
But seriously, this may be an instance where the only real way to control this type of content is to sit down with your child and have a reasonable discussion about the nature of the internet. I know no one likes actually talking to their children, but anything you put in place will eventually be overcome, so it makes more sense to just discuss the sort of material that can be found on the internet, and talk about why you as a parent don't want them looking into it. It's likely that eventually they're going to look at it, but if you talk about it now at least you can contextualize what's there for them, and maybe you plant the seeds of a fully realized eventual adult by showing them that you will trust them to make the right decisions.
You can set up a transparent proxy like squid (http://www.squid-cache.org/) combined with iptables (http://iptables.org/), so that any outbound port 80 or port 443 requests from the machine can get filtered via squid.
Then, in squid you can run all your logic through DansGuardian (http://dansguardian.org/?page=whatisdg), a content filter.
Hammer Software http://hammersoftware.ca/ Good service, Creative solutions - Hamilton, ON
You can go simple and just avoid frustration by using OpenDNS:
https://www.opendns.com/home-i...
They have a feature to block inappropriate websites, and I think you cannot change the DNS unless you have the sudo/root password.
Also, Adblock Plus blocks malware and social media (if your kids are too young to use Facebook).
Finally, YouTube has an option to block sensitive media, under account options.
Good luck!
A free OS, but censor the world for your child? Good luck with that.
just block DNS queries to the sites you want to censor, i think some routers (openwrt?) can do it
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Prepare for a ton of people that project themselves into the situation as the kid and don't want any restrictions at all, instead of as the parent.
If they're old enough to surf on their own, they're old enough to handle it on their own.
It is - to a degree - your call if they are old enough to do so, but countermeasures to keep the "bad internet" away from your children, if you are geek enough to allow them access, is a bit of an oxymoron.
Hint: If they want to see porn and/or Isis set someone on fire, they will do so. If not at home then at/with their friends. Trying to prevent this is being silly. Once I trusted my daughter to handle her own Ubuntu Netbook I also trusted her to handle the web. ... I did curb her webtime though, it can get out of hand. ... But she uses the web and her smartphone as an extension for her social life, not as a substitute. She's actually more on the go than I am, and unwinds not surfing but streaming american teenie serials to improve her english (currenty the 100 is hip). Not the worst thing to do, imho. Her homework gets done and she's due for her a-levels, so who am I to complain?
I had a discussion a few years back with a mom of one of her very close friends. She too was worried that the new laptop would enable them to watch porn and get a false impression about sexuality. I basically said the same thing that I wrote above and bit my lip about her habit of changing boyfriends every odd month - something way more likely of determining her daughters POV on relationships and sexuality.
Ask them to learn something productive with them - my daughter eventually decided to do a little image editing and I got her a neat colorful book on Gimp of which she duefully did some excersises and learned a little about files, photography and image manipulation. Good thing for a teenage girl exposed to a cosmetics/fashion industry in constant overdrive. She didn't want to learn programming though. ... I'll survive that I guess.
Tell them about Facebook, Whatsapp, data mining, automated 24/7 surveilance, scams, rapists, shady friends, online mobbing (both sides of it!), etc.. Give them fake accounts and tell them to never use their real name and adress and to be suspicious of the web in general - including mainstream news.
Bottom line: ... That's parenting 101 for you.
Be a good father, take care of your kids and make a reasonable judgement as to when they're ready to have their own computer.
Do the basics to keep them out of harms way (hint: porn is way, way down on that list) and make sure they've understood what you're talking about and have no fear of coming to you whenever they're insecure about something internet related. Let the rest take its course.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I don't understand what all the brouhaha is about. The best authority in this case are your children. If there is a way to lock someone out of Internet access they will stumble on it or figure it out. Ask for their help. You may lose your internet access, but at least your children will be safe.
...you will get that when people have their consciences pricked by something truthful.
1. Use OpenDNS. It isn't perfect but it helps keep inappropriate content away from young kids.
2. It is assumed you are having conversations with your kids about what is safe for them and what isn't. Developing trust is important. Ideally, WHEN they run across something unsafe they will come to you about it.
3. Ever Accountable works great on Android devices. (They also have a Windows version.) There is a small monthly fee for the service. It isn't a filter - it is a report of what websites and apps are used weekly.
My kids know this is installed and they know I am not "spying" on them. It isn't any different from being on a network at work and it prepares them for real life.
I don't know about Linux. We gave up Ubuntu and Peppermint when my kids needed some software that didn't work with Wine. I'm sure there are options like Ever Accountable out there for Linux.
Supervision and education aside,
Try "Untangle" on a firewall box between them and the internet. Then it doesn't matter what OS they're using, or if they're using an iPad, iPod, or other device to access the internet either.
Untangle is free (at least the lite version, which is actually more than enough for home use), and will run on an old or cheap box. I have mine running on a book-sized PC I built for under $200, including an SSD HD. It's a Linux-based firewall/NAT/more.
It'll filter ads (common malware sources), malware, phishing attacks, intrusions, website filtering (whitelist or blacklist) by content type, block certain protocols (TOR, etc.). Basically, you can lock it down tight. My kids are still too young to intentionally get into much trouble yet, but it protects them from the inadvertent trouble. But - it was enough to totally frustrate my teenage nephews over Christmas - and the logs show they weren't able to get around it (which was a good test!).
www.untangle.com
Check it out.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
disclaimer: no children. True enough kids will get their internet fix via McDonald's and Subway or whatever, but still you can filter DNS at the router level using OpenWRT. Using OpenWRT is a good idea anyway.
For example:
http://www.farville.com/home-n...
I wonder if you can configure a kid's mobile device so it will ONLY connect to the wifi devices you approve of in-advance?
Ummmm, I suppose this isn't exactly off-topic and we're all on the Slashdots together now, but I find the ELK Stack (ElasticStash, Logstash, Kibana) awesome for dealing with logs. Double-disclaimer: I am a server guy.
From personal experience with my now 14 year old son - you can do what you want, but don't be surprised when they find ways to get around whatever roadblocks you put in place. And the more draconian your restrictions, the better they will get at hiding their actions from you. Fortunately, currently my son is only interested in playing games and watching video game related videos.
Monitoring & supervision are the main tools which we use. No computers in his bedroom and we try to discourage him using his Chromebook (managed user) while sitting in a corner. His iPhone doesn't have a data plan and we've disabled Safari & the app store.
We tried website blacklist & whitelists - but they simply require too much effort to maintain. Better to try to teach him to learn better judgement on the websites he does visit.
I'm under the opinion that philopophy is dead and most Education sucks; If we keep wrapping our children in blankets we're only going keep them immature which is leading to the rotting of philosophy and knowledege. I know what I'm saying is politically incorrect but If children don't find out for 'em selves how are they going to do if certain situations on the internet arise in real life.
I'd say ditch the idea of 'innocence' a virtue spouted by religion and start getting kids educated otherwise bigger shit in the such as war is only going to worse in later years as later generations will want war as they won't even know the true horrors of war and they will just that war is soultion to everything and they probably wn't event question the hroseshit lies of politicans .
I was 15 when I saw the guantanamo torture vids along with collateral murder ; I'm glad I did, I'm 20 now and because of experience watching those videos I understand that war sought only be used in serious situations; I fully understand the hypocrisy of our leaders and the lies that were fed to us at school. If my parents had blocked my access I'd probably been just been just as oblivious as everyone to the true surveillance state of which we live in.
Little Brains cannot be held as innocent forever; as shown here which points out that the age matuirity is increasing because again little minds haven't been exposed to the enough reality. Students today are more like children than adults and need protection.
Acting on something in one of those cookbooks, or even figuring out how to change a URL to see something you're not supposed to see, will get your kid/teenage self thrown in prison for years, as opposed to the 1980s "grounded for a week by your father after getting a call from the phone company". I'd be far more scared of zero-tolerance law enforcement tearing my family apart than I would be of corrupting the kid.
Supervision and education, but also a realistic expectation which TFAs summary lacks.
Here's the world people like you want to bring about: http://www.comicsareevil.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/wc161.gif
You are a blight on the universe.
You sound angry about your own upbringing.
In general, parents aren't interested in controlling their children at all times but instead are trying to strike a delicate balance between them having freedoms/choices and being protected against some truly awful things. The web has introduced the concept of being one button-click away from exposure to things not suitable for children. As another poster said, an innocent search for one thing can bring results that are not for young eyes.
It's very hard to do and I know that when in doubt, I err on the side of caution. Kids by definition need oversight and guidance. They also usually don't think that they do and that's just normal, not something that needs to be 'fixed.'
This is same reason we use prepaid phones. They have a budget and can use it how they wish. The budget changes with their grades. More A's the faster it refills and their budget goes up.
Is it just A's? Will a report card full of B+s put one of the kids at risk of being stranded somewhere with no way to call home?
Anyway I don't know why a parent should not be a good parent if he looks for extra means of protecting his children, other than what you can do every day.
What is being asked for is not a form of protection but a dangerous abdication of responsibility. Indeed we've known it is bad for so long that we actually have a fairytale we read to our children which cautions against it. Remember the tale of sleeping beauty who was to prick her finger on a spinning wheel before falling asleep and so the king banished all spinning wheels from the kingdom. Since it was impossible to completely enforce the blockade the result was that when she saw a spinning wheel she was so curious abut it she ended pricking her finger.
The same applies to the internet: you cannot block everything. Instead you can just use the same approach that you use for everything else in life: set out the rules, supervise them so you have a reasonable chance of noticing any serious violations (if your kids are human there will be violations and you will not catch all of them), make sure there are consequences for those serious violations you do catch and finally teach them how to deal with any inappropriate content which they do manage to see.
Nobody suggests that we should combine HHGTTG and Google Glass to make glasses for kids that will turn black and the first sign of anything deemed inappropriate occurring in real life. Indeed we set up rules for our kids to help avoid such situations and we make sure that our kids know how to handle such situations if they do occur (e.g. say no to strangers, don't do drugs etc.). So why don't we take the same approach to parenting with the internet?
Monitoring / restricting access at the network level will apply to all devices using the network, and I have recommended OpenDNS in the past. Basically, you would configure your home router to use OpenDNS for DNS resolution, and this would be the default for devices connecting to the internet through that router. Sites could be filtered, and the sites accessed could be reviewed for further action. Note that this would only apply to wired and WiFi devices (and not cellular connected devices), and is trivial to bypass without additional device management. But it can be effectively used as a tool to assist with parenting.
>>>>>
https://www.opendns.com/home-internet-security/parental-controls/opendns-home/
Go ahead.
Build your Great Firewall of m.alessandrini.
<lying>
I won't judge.
</lying>
It's called a whitelisting firewall.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
I'd rather just discuss these things with my kids. Way easier to give them the tools to make the right decisions on their own than to hide my kids under a rock, deep in a cave.
allowing offensiveness like xkill, xbounce and that one cute "DO WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT" game in every distro's repository.
None of those hosts file block adult content you want to keep from children.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
This includes the hours that they are on-line (had one getting at 2am to 4am to talk with freinds).
Friends in what country? 2 AM to 4 AM in your time zone might correspond to the time between completing homework and shutting down for the night in another time zone. For example, what's 2 AM to 4 AM in Amsterdam might be 7 PM to 9 PM in Chicago.
first hit: http://www.linuxlinks.com/arti...
Parents can not control whether or not their kids have a mobile device that can connect to the Internet? Are you seriously trying to tell me that there are no site blockers available for Mobile devices? Good grief, you sound as bad as TFA. "I can't be a parent because..." STOP MAKING EXCUSES!
Kids growing up with this stuff is not bad, assuming they had some supervision and education on the way. It's the lack of those things that generally cause problems, not the other way around.
A kid being able to eventually bypass or circumvent controls is yet another excuse for a lack of parenting. There is a level of knowledge required to do this, and a parent should be able to figure out that their kid did bypass and take the appropriate PARENTAL ACTION!
No wonder the world is so fucked up, people like you have an excuse not to do a damn thing. Oh I know, let the Government regulate and block, blah blah. Simply pathetic.
My router is set up to email me daily with a list of web addresses accessed. I showed my kids how this works, and it's enough for me to know that my kids know what sites are being accessed.
Depends what you mean by truly awful. As kids we discovered my parents porn rags. We must have been 6 7 years old. I must have been a bit confused about body parts, wondering why one naked lady was eating whal looked like a big poop. Our 2.5 year old is using an android tablet, and it is mostly used for youtube. I dont see any posible harm in it, except that those endless nursery songs drive me nuts. Trying to get her interested in timmy time and shaun the sheep instead.
When I was a youngster we had internet / BBS porn, bikes without helmets, and were even were left to play outside alone. What is this obsession with “protecting” against some “threat” which I have doubts exists in anything but our overactive imagination. Ohh knows my child was exposed to immoral material. The reality is you should talk to your kids if you think porn is immoral. To make it out as if its somehow dangerous though? Ridicules. Regardless of what you think your kids will probably make there own decisions on such matter anyway. It's called growing up.
You are either a liar or are counting spending 45 minutes trying to count that time where you couldn't find the button on an abacus A fucking 360 didn't have a 45 minute boot time.
Well, there are a few that really make the effort, by keeping the children in cages or small locked rooms.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
For me one of the most effective things was to let them know that was monitoring what sites they were visiting. When you first let them online you need to supervise them closely and explain what they should avoid and why. Once they understand what is expected/allowed then give then free access but let then know you are monitoring what sites they are visiting. Knowing that they will self censor.
From a technical point of view I put their machines on a separate subnet with a transparent proxy to monitor access and cron jobs/iptables to block any access when it was time for them to be sleeping.
It is also worth remembering they don't magically change from children to adults on a particular birthday, as they mature yet then know they are allow a wider range of access. For example as young children I did not allow them to play violent games but as preteens I allowed moderately violent games and as teens I didn't really limit games because they had demonstrated they had maturity separate to rules of real life from games. Likewise trying to stop teen boys from view porn is a waste of time, best to let them know that what they see on the Internet should generally not be consider real in terms dealing with the opposite sex.
I feed my kids an information diet that is so rich that they simply do not have the time and energy to bother with the more useless of humanities creations.
My two daughters both had their own computers by the time they were about 10 or 12. They had them in their bedrooms. Other parents we talked to were completely freaked out. "Oh my God, we would never let Tiffany have a computer in her bedroom." Does Tiffany have a smartphone? Well of course. Where does she keep it? In her bedroom. WTF?? It just didn't occur to them that all the reasons they had for not letting their kids have a computer in their bedrooms were equally applicable to smartphones.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Several solutions rely on setting up a proxy with a whitelist of sites, or similar, but I'm afraid this approach can make internet unusable, or otherwise be easy to bypass.
This is networking 101. If you're having to setup proxy settings on client computers then you're doing it wrong. Make your router/firewall send all web traffic through Squid in transproxy mode. As an added bonus you can tell Squid to use Privoxy as its upstream proxy which gives you the ability to block most web advertising out of the box and you have full control over black-listing and white-listing all sorts of things ranging from what's acceptable Javascript to blocking images by dimensions (think banner ads), etc.. Privoxy can also deanimate GIFs so that only the first frame is shown instead of all those distracting "buy me" or "sex me up" frames. Privoxy even lets you fix broken HTML/Javascript on the fly (e.g.: fix brain-dead Javascript validation that's not backed up with server-side validation, which is surprisingly common on banking sites).
I use Untangle, OpenDNS, and a custom /etc/host list at school to follow CIPA law. In fact, all of the schools filter with various solutions. The bottom line is NONE OF IT WORKS.
Students:
-Use their cellular connections to bypass filtering.
-Use HTTPS (Free Untangle does not filter this) to bypass filtering.
-Use Proxies to bypass filtering.
-Use Ultrasurf to bypass filtering.
-Use SSH tunnels to their home computers to bypass filtering.
If China and Iran can't succussfuly filter, neither can you. Your best bet is to appropriately educate the child. If you must, check history and logs.
1. NEVER get naked in front of the computer, or publicatiote any picture of yourself in a forum you would not want your parents or teacher to know about..
2. Never tell your real name. (Hay, in my days you got banned from the sites if you did. Alias is the way) in a forum you would not want your parents or teacher to know about
3. Never tell your location (and for fuck sake, get that vpn to anonymize your location and identety)
4. Look at what ever you want, talk to whoever you want, just never break rule 1,2 and 3.
Of course today's kids need to juggle with multiple identity's, the good pupil, the horny teen and to good daughter.
But then again, they are alot smarter then our generation we was, not to mention our parents.
See subject: Installed from admin acct & kids use less priveleged acct can do the job (on various "bad things" broken up by category IF you like, & that's done here, file-by-file (malwarebytes site) -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... )
* They are TRULY one of, if not THE, best sites I use from the security community for populating my custom hosts file here...
APK
P.S.=> For the BEST hosts file?
APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-1 32/64-bit -> http://start64.com/index.php?o...
MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus per that very recent test from July 2014 http://www.av-test.org/en/news...
... apk
APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-1 32/64-bit:
http://start64.com/index.php?o...
FREE & adds speed, security, + reliability, doing more with less, more efficiently vs. addons + fixes DNS' redirect security issues:
---
A.) Hosts do more than:
1.) AdBlock ("souled-out" 2 Google/Crippled by default http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/... & ABP too http://finance.yahoo.com/news/... )
2.) Ghostery (Advertiser owned) - "Fox guards henhouse" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
3.) Request Policy -> http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
B.) Hosts add reliability vs. downed/redirected dns (& overcome site redirects e.g. /. beta).
C.) Hosts secure vs. malicious domains too -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... w/ less "moving parts" complexity
D.) Hosts files yield more:
1.) Speed (adblock & hardcodes fav sites - faster than remote dns)
2.) Security (vs. malicious domains serving malcontent + block spam/phish & trackers)
3.) Reliability (vs. downed, Kaminsky redirected (99% ISP DNS' = unpatched vs. it), DGA, Fastflux, & dynDNS botnets)
4.) Anonymity (vs. dns request logs + dnsbl's).
---
* Hosts do more w/ less (1 file) @ faster levels (ring 0) vs redundant inefficient addons (slowing slower ring 3 browsers) via filtering 4 the IP stack (coded in C, loads w/ os, & 1st net resolver queried w\ 45++ yrs.of optimization).
* Addons = more complex + slow browsers in messagepassing (use a few concurrently & see) & are nullified by native browser methods - It's how Clarityray's destroying Adblock.
* Addons slowup slower usermode browsers layering on more - & bloat RAM consumption + excessive cpu use too (4++gb extra in FireFox https://blog.mozilla.org/nneth...)
(Instead, work w/ a more capable native kernelmode part you already have - hosts (An integrated part of the ip stack))
APK
P.S.=> "The premise is quite simple: Take something designed by nature & reprogram it to make it work for the body rather than against it..." - Dr. Alice Krippen: "I am legend"
...apk
Can adblock do 16 things hosts do for speed, security, & reliability:
1.) Protect vs. malicious sites/servers (beyond malicious ads: See 2-10 next)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop communication to C&C servers
3.) Protect vs. dynamic dns botnets + stop communication to C&C servers
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop communication to C&C servers
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (adds reliability)
6.) Protect vs. DNS redirect poisoned dns
7.) Protect vs. trackers
8.) Protect vs. spam
9.) Protect vs. phishing
10.) Protect vs. bandwidth caps
11.) Get you past a dnsbl
12.) Keep you off dns request logs
13.) Speed up websurfing by adblocks & hardcoded fav. sites
14.) Work on ANY webbound app (think stand-alone email programs) multiplatform.
15.) Give you easily texteditor controlled data for the above
16.) Do all that & block ads (better than addons) more efficiently in cpu cycles + memory usage
* ANSWER ="NO" to each above on AdBlock doing it as well or at all!
APK
P.S.=> AdBlock does FAR less than hosts do & FAR less efficiently - hosts by way of comparison, do MORE w/ less + Hosts start w/ the IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN to operate (as 1st resolver queried):
AdBlock's 4++gb & 100% CPU usage flooring inefficiency -> https://blog.mozilla.org/nneth... + ClarityRay defeats it + it 'souled-out' & is crippled by default paid off to not do its job http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/... & ABP too http://finance.yahoo.com/news/...
AdBlock adds complexity/room for breakdown/exploit + from a slower mode of operations (usermode = more messagepassing overheads vs. hosts in kernelmode).
For the BEST hosts file?
APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-1 32/64-bit -> http://start64.com/index.php?o...
MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus http://www.av-test.org/en/news...
... apk
Result? W. Palant RAN after he wrote me by email 1st saying "hosts are a shitty solution" to which I replied:
"Show us adblock can do more for added speed, security, reliability, & anonymity than hosts can, + that adblock does it more efficiently than hosts"
Which on my latter 'point-in-challenge' on efficiency AdBlock's proven by research to be MASSIVELY inefficient -> https://blog.mozilla.org/nneth... & adblock does FAR less than hosts (especially crippled by default).
I sent Wladimir Palant that challenge in response to his statement from 2 different email addresses I use!
Result = Still no answer from him in regard to my challenge put to him to this very day MONTHS later - that tell you anything? It did me!
He knows his addon is less efficient & features laden by FAR vs. hosts - Wladimir Palant RAN like a scared rabbit!
ClarityRay's also DESTROYING AdBlock - via native browser methods to DUMP what addons you use (it can't DO THAT to hosts files).
I only tell it how it is on hosts' superiority vs. AdBlock - Funny part is, Wladimir Palant running does too!
Especially considering "Almost ALL Ads Blocked" has 'souled-out' -> Google & Others Pay Adblock Plus To Show You Ads Anyway: http://news.slashdot.org/comme... & ABP too http://finance.yahoo.com/news/...
APK
P.S.=> Bottom-Line: Hosts = a superior solution that also fixes DNS redirect security issues (vs. browser addons & their inefficiencies + messagepassing overheads as well as myriad lack of abilities hosts have from 1 file that's part of the IP stack itself - faster, more efficient, & less redundant as well, since TCP/IP has 45++ yrs. of refinement & optimization in it, & runs in a higher CPU serviced ring of privelege & operations in kernelmode vs. slower usermode layering over browsers slowing them more, & hosts = 1st resolver queried by the OS itself also)... apk
Install Adblock Plus (or uBlock, or Adblock, etc) onto the childs browser. Blocks the banner, popup, porn, scaming, etc that you're probably worried about.
In reality, if the child wants these things, it'll find them. An Adblocker will stop the child from accidentaly stumbling upon these things, which is probably your main concern.
It's not a complete solution, but by far the easiest, simplest, and if explained to the child probably one that the child will actually want!
>A fucking 360 didn't have a 45 minute boot time.
I had a Dell laptop running Win7 that took about an hour to boot up. I took two videos:
* The first one was from when I clicked on the mouse, to restart the system, until the login screen after rebooting was displayed;
* The second one was from I clicked on the mouse, to shut the system down. Then pressed the start key, and watch the entire boot process, until the login screen is presented;
When I uploaded them to YouTube, they were rejected, due to their length. To this day, I have no idea why Win7 took so long to boot up.
I also had a BSD box that took about ten hours to boot up. That was because it ran a disk integrity checker, then tripwire, and then something else. Roughly three terrabytes of data files to check, every time it booted up.
Wind Beneath Thy Wings
As somebody who does not have children, I obviously think this is simple to solve, because I don't know what it's actually like.
One method is to physically control access to the internet access devices. For portables, when they are not being used, they should be put away somewhere specific so you can see how long they're spending with them. For non-portables, make it so you are the one who has to put the password in to log on. When the children are using the devices, and also afterwards, talk to them and take an interest in what they are doing. It should become apparent if they are doing something they shouldn't; either they will be completely open about it and say something that makes you think "err... no...", or they will become vague or not be able to account for the entire time they have spent, prompting further investigation and maybe a frank discussion about whatever it is they've found.
Make it so that this isn't some draconian system of control, but rather an atmosphere of openness in which your children feel they can come to you when they have problems on the internet. Join in with the putting devices away thing, so it's not just them who have to deal with it; we could all benefit from limiting our use of such devices.
Another method would be to just log all their use at the network level. If you see anything untoward, discuss it. Once they figure out you're doing this, it obviously doesn't deal with phones, which can bypass the local network with their own connections, unless you go to some trouble to get the phone's internet connection routed through your own network infrastructure. (This capability is available from some specialist service providers, but it's expensive and you need to know your stuff. Of course, you could just _claim_ to have done this...)
Kids on farms see animal sex. Kids on farms see animals killed. In first grade, we were taken to the funeral home to see a dead guy, someone important in the community.
Kids in primitive times saw sex, there weren't rooms.
By the time they are old enough to understand and be stimulated it is OK.
Our son has had a computer since 2 years old, never had any controls. In his room from about age 5. So far as I can tell, at age 18 he is completely normal in every way.
1. Don't lie to your kids.
2. Tell them the rule: they do something they shouldn't like access an adult site, their internet access is canned. Right there. Period.
3. Install a keylogger on a limited account for them. Now abiding rule #1, you can tell them that you will know what websites they've been on and if anything you don't like them being on comes up, refer to rule #2.
4. SUPERVISE THEM. The younger they are the more supervision they're gonna need. Be aware of terms of service on websites such as Facebook (under 13s not allowed) and make sure THEY are aware as well. If your kid is under 13, they do not get a fucking facebook account.
5. Don't let them play freemium games on the internet. There are MANY games about on compilation CDs that are so similar they're indistinguishable (and arguably better quality) than Facebook Freemiums, such as Chuzzle as being a perfectly good alternative for Candy Crush. I have Chuzzle on a games collection DVD. Not that I play it, it is pretty interesting looking if you're into click/drool gaming. I'm not. But it keeps the rugrats away from your credit cards.
6. The Internet is a TOOL to be USED, not an alternative reality to disappear in to.
Speaking of which, I really must go to bed. Night, all. Fucking 4am, the hell am I still doing up?
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
1. Communicate with your children. Let them know what is acceptable surfing and what is not. Teach them about the good and the bad of the Internet and how to recognize it. Be specific and thorough.
2. Use the Internet router to control their devices access. You should be able to write rules to limit them by the device.
3. Use controls on the pcs and mobile devices. For example on the PC you could use Timekpr.
4. You can log their activity.
What level of monitoring you use depends on many factors. Factors include, but are not limited to: your ability to trust your children, the trustability of your children to follow your rules, your level of paranoia.
Note on item #1. Communication is an ongoing two way street. This means you can't just sit down once with them and unleash them on the world. It means being a parent and actually being involved.
Be prepared for your children to eventually be able to break every control you implement.
Only you know can know what level of monitoring is right, and which is too little and which is too Big Brother.
Eventually they'll be able to figure out how to hack into your PCs or devices and bypass every measure you institute. At which point you should hire them to work for you.
1. As other posters have mentioned. Building trust with your kids and educating them about online and other dangers is a starting point.
2. Actually parent what devices your kids have access to (e.g perhaps they only need a kindle and not a tablet, or a Nokia brick phone rather than a smart phone).
3. Think about where you put your family computer. If it's in a public space then they will think twice about what they do.
4. If you want to do content filtering then one idea is buy a rack (after all physical access means root access). Put your ADSL modem, and a PC in there running linux and squid. You might want to also look into Open WRT. I have a rack with a router running openwrt in it and a headless PC running ubuntu server with squid on it. From there I have blacklisted all sites and white-listed sites that are appropriate. The OpenWRT router enables me to redirect traffic to the proxy server and allows me to have a guest SSID that isn't filtered. Squid is setup with username authentication and if people don't authenticate then only a few safe sites are available. If you wanted to implement a captive portal then you could also do that I guess.
5. If you do get your kids a smart phone check out the filtering software available on it and also consider if you just want to disable 3G data (usually you just request your telco to do this). Obviously you want the phone and plan in your name so they can't change it. Prepaid plans are also a good idea.
and not give them access to x.
set them up pine and elm and lynx. Give them access to some programming tools. That way their time on the internet will have to be meaningful until they can write their own solution to your problem.
Shorewall, transparent squid proxy with dans gaurdian and chastity belt, done
If "parental content control" means your kids do not learn about sex, I'm opposed to it. In countries where people are ridiculously puritan (i.e., the US) the number of teen pregnancies is 20 times higher than in countries where people are relaxed about sex and nudity (i.e., the Netherlands). I have always supervised my kids, online and offline, but never installed "parental content control".
no, I don't have a sig
you can try privoxy as a proxy with tight control (whitelist/backlist, regexp by words, url, etc), if needed as a transparent proxy, so one can not change that. you can later screen the logs to see if anything more needs to be filtered (recommended ublocker or ghostery to also block ads and tracking, to help keep the logs cleaner) :)
WoT (web of trust) firefox add-on as a generic blocker, as it block bad, dangerous or not child safe... is not perfect but no solution will completely filter all urls... having said that, if is very good, also protects adults
Chats and social network are the main dangers, so parental supervisions and teaching is always required
Make then understand that the internet stores and copies everythings, so they should keep private things private and that they should always questions how much they should trust people that they don't know in flesh and blood.
you kids need to trust you enough to tell you about the problems and things they found... if they really want to workaround any filter, they will do it...
i see friends kids using the dogs facebook login to hide things from parents, others connecting to the neighborhood network and many using the (unprotected) friends computer to do things that they can't do at home
Higuita
Setup your computers or better yet your router to give out OpenDNS's family IPs for DNS servers. 208.67.222.123 & 208.67.220.123
That is a good first level of security to start with. Lock down the /etc/resolv.conf file so that their account can't change it.
Protip: get your kids to socialize away from the internet. That will boost their lifetime achievement in jobs, school, everything much more then reading Wikipedia or watching documentaries. It's all about social skills. Kids should be writing and doing math more anyways. by hand. over and over again. If your kids are spending any extra time on the internet, it's a waste. The best thing is just logs that show how much time they wasted and discuss it with them, but remember they will just hate you for monitoring them
When I was a Linux dad with young kids getting access to the net, I spent some time worrying about this. When I grew up, you might score a copy of Penthouse, but today, you might find "Two Girls One Cup," or back then it was probably goatse. Nothing I ever encountered in Penthouse could compare to goatse. What would stuff like that even do to the mind of a child? Not to mention all the pedophile stalkers and lions and tigers and bears. I felt I had to try to protect them.
In the end, I found some stuff some guys said I could use to create a net nanny thing. It involved reading several PhD dissertations, a lot of programming, and at least three rubber chickens. It was all way over my head, and I never got anywhere with it. The kids ended up having totally unrestricted, unfettered, free reign of the whole big ocean of sleaze and pedophile stalkers and everything, pretty much from kindergarten on.
They turned out fine, and eventually thanked me for not trying to net nanny them. As my now 21 year old son said once, "Dad, I never wanted to watch donkeys fucking midgets anyway, and you never had anything to worry about."
Both of them have switched to Windows, incidentally.
See subject: Guess where you can get the BEST hostsfile from http://start64.com/index.php?o... ?
ANSWER = "Your truly" & the newly released APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit program!
* :)
(... & IF I don't import them, as is? The program makes it a SNAP to add/merge more that do provide what it is this article's about... )
APK
P.S.=> Why's mine the best? Well, obviously since it combines 10 others' hostsfiles (from the security community itself & reputable people in it) + the fact it 'whitelists' things that ought NOT be blocked (such as search engines, email servers, logon servers (for various things), firewall/antivirus/antispyware/antimalware software companies, major software vendors (MS for example), tech + security blogs, etc. - et al of LIKE "ilk")...
... apk
ANY hostsfile can do it (even 1 you add pr0n sites too) & mine's LOADED with them (then again, I've populated it over time since 1997 from NUMEROUS reputable sources online, far beyond those 10 my program gathers) as blocking entries.
* Plus, face it: IF they didn't, why's mine have porn sites blocked like mad, & I largely populated mine from the 10 sites I noted, but also others over time as well (bluetack comes to mind, malwr.com does, & so do the botnet trackers like ZEUS + MANY OTHERS I haven't named too).
APK
P.S.=> I'm almost certain that some of the 10 my program imports block porn sites though - if only for the fact they're known for infecting/infesting people like mad over time IF for anything... apk