Parental Control

[Saintsman]

I bought my 11 year old daughter a laptop for her birthday as she is moving up to secondary school soon. I've watched her use it a couple of times and she's into all sorts of sites. Probably 99% is innocent but you never know what she might accidently come across. Can anyone recommend a good parental control programme to keep her safe?

Thanks,
Saintsman

[Mac the Knife]

You can try, but I don't know whether I'd bother.

If she's reasonably intelligent and wants to circumvent your enforced protections it'll take her less than an hour. If she wants to look at unsuitable sites then she will. I don't censor Tom's internet access at all (he's also 11). He knows never to install anything without my say-so, never to open emails from people he doesn't know, never to sign-up for anything without permission and never to give his email addy or name without an OK from me. If he sees people shagging, so what. I think he's a sensible kid and I just have to trust him.

A good hardware firewall, a good and up-to-date AV and Windows Defender are essential

By their nature all protection utilities end up blocking lots of perfectly innocent sites which happen to have trigger keywords in them so can be quite frustrating.

Most of the millions of easily accessible "unsuitable" sites are fairly straight sex, about which these days, she probably knows more than you, at least theoretically.

If you feel you must put something in, then HostsMan - http://hostsman.abelhadigital.com/ - is free and as good as anything. Not only can you block pr0n, but it will also block a lot of malicious sites, which IMHO are a far worse threat than endless tired images of people copulating.

:ok:

[Saab Dastard]

Have to agree with Mac (again) :) on this.

One advantage of a hardware firewall is the ability to block specific domains - so if I see the boys on a website I deem unsuitable, it's a simple matter to block it on the firewall.

You can also obtain lists of domains that can be added in bulk. I have gradually added a raft of domains connected with advertising / tracking.

SD

[IO540]

IMV this is an impossible task to achieve while keeping the PC useful for anything.

I tried it (have 2 boys) a couple of years ago and eventually gave up. Net Nanny is a piece of cr*p which has various bugs in the way it applies its rules, and there was no way to make it run its blacklist while allowing access to a model aircraft shop ("model" on the title").

It takes the average boy minutes to discover that entering certain keywords (e.g. "oral", to start with the really mild mainstream stuff) into Google and selecting Images will bypass anything you have set up; the hardest core stuff appearing immediately. No need to go to pay websites (most really dodgy stuff has to be paid for, I am informed :) ); this simple measure reveals enough to keep him going for months.....

The much bigger risk is the kid going to some website which trashes the PC. This is a real problem. One must

- apply all the micro$oft patches

- have a NAT router whose config is password protected and he can't get in (to open any ports) - do not allow any P2P software

- run an updated antivirus program (Kaspersky Personal pro is my choice but the others usually work too)

- not have the machine connected to a network with others on it, and if this cannot be avoided then at least run it under a login which a) is not an Administrator and b) the login/password is not the same as the rest of the network.

- not use the machine for anything seriously important

- if you want to really p*ss him off, inhibit file downloads in Explorer - though this is easy enough to circumvent.

The above said, a kid will always trash a PC eventually (to the point where it needs a reformat from the shop recovery CDs), if only by loading into it every CD that comes on the cover of every computer mag. My son has trashed every PC within 3 months, totally, and probably none of it was through a virus.

Kids are reckless, and very very fast; much faster than you can watch them. They will click on every "OK" box that pops up, so fast you will barely see it. They don't care what the dialog box said. The answer is always "OK".

If doing something known dodgy, they will hover their fingers over the alt-F4 keys and press them the instant you walk up to them, etc....

The joys of being a parent :)

[Saintsman]

Good advice. I suppose education is the best option.

[IO540]

The solution is something that has been comprehensively discredited over the years.

Parental supervision

:)

Yes I know it doesn't work, but my 10 year old already knows what or*l s*x is (from his older brother) and he thinks it's disgusting, so he's OK. He also knows what an*l s*x is and he thinks that's really disgusting.

So I don't think it matters. You can't protect kids from this stuff; they hear about it in the playground.