Looking for a Parental Control Strategy. Parents who have done this?

[brian_c]

Hi. Thanks everyone for making such a great website and thanks for reading. I'm looking for a Parental Control Strategy.

A couple of years ago I helped my neighbor with a router in order to connect her iMac and Xbox to a single internet connection. It consisted of installing a Linksys WRT54G, enabling DHCP, disabling wireless, and plugging in ethernet. Not much of a challenge. Now a few years on her son is 11 and she thinks some sort of content filtering is a good idea. So she called me and asked if I could help her.

This has proven very difficult for me as there seems to be a lot of solutions where many are not particularly happy in the results, except the most expensive and complicated to administer. I'm willing to do some admin but I can't be working on her machine and router every day.

I'm confused, and I don't have a teenager or access to many router setups to test the network and these solutions to see what is optimal. From what I can gather there are 5 basic solutions (or combinations), from what I perceive as easiest to manage to most time consuming/technical or expensive to manage.

1) Filtering as a function of the OS in OS X.
2) Filtering as a function of an add on program (though I'm not sure which work for OS X).
3) Filtering as a function of a router and/or an additional pay service (some of these are Windows only).
4) Filtering as a function of a router and a separate hardware firewall, or flashing the router with custom firmware.
5) Filtering as a function of a router/firewall built as a separate Linux box with something like ipCop.

Her setup is very straightforward, which I'm hoping to work to my advantage. One Xbox and DTV, and an iMac next to it in view from the sofa and the kitchen (which is what I suggested when we set this up). This way he can play on the Xbox while she is on the computer, and he can be on the computer while she watches TV or makes dinner and monitors his use.

My first thought is to employ option 1 and limit access times through access restrictions in the router. Though this seems like it could be unworkable in some circumstances like holidays etc. Well, I've never done this in the real world and I would hate to give her the impression that everything was safe when in fact it was not, but I don't want to turn it into a massive project either if it's not necessary. Thanks again.

 

[thiggins]

Each of the "big three" has some sort of router-based consumer security solution. Cisco / Linksys has partnered with Trend Micro, D-Link with B-Secure and NETGEAR with OpenDNS.

Reviews:
Linksys by Cisco WRT310N with Home Network Defender Reviewed

D-Link DIR-625 RangeBooster N Router Review - Security Setup, Parental Controls

These solutions have been made available in multiple routers in each vendor's product lines. You'll need to check product details or do a pre-sales query with the companies to get the up-to-date list. NETGEAR's first bundled their solution in the WNR2000.

Access controls are relatively easy to implement and can be done well by any of the solutions out there. You can use a whitelist to lock things down real tight and only allow access to specific services, web, mail, etc. and block others.

But there is no airtight, foolproof Internet filtering solution, at least none that I've seen. The biggest hole is usually images returned by search engines, followed by over / under filtering.

The best approach is one that you've already suggested, having the computer in a public space, where activity can be monitored. The other important piece is an open discussion with the kids about the good and bad stuff on the Internet and what your expectations are. This is an important part because you may be able to control and monitor their access at home, but the Internet is available just about everywhere.

Finally, make sure your friend knows that there is no set-and-forget solution. And don't forget good, auto-updating antivirus and anti-malware running on all machines.

Good luck!

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

OpenDNS offers a free service. In addition to content filtering, using OpenDNS servers for your routers/servers DNS forwarding instead of your ISPs DNS servers gives you an added layer of protection from malware, as known bad sites are blocked.

www.opendns.org

Works with any router, all you do is set the WAN connections DNS servers to the 2 for OpenDNS....208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 instead of letting them obtain automatically from your ISP. Some routers have other options like DNS override, or have it set in your DHCP options...several different approaches depending on your make/model.

 

[thiggins]

Thanks for the suggestion about OpenDNS. I had known about it, but not realized that it provided the services that it does.

I just ran a quick check of the free service and it suffers from the same search engine weaknesses. It doesn't block images from blocked categories.

Anyone know of kid-safe search engines that really work, especially for images?

 

[adisor19]

opendns

Saw your tweet so i came to answer the call

We recently started using OpenDNS as an extra layer of protection on top of our Cisco ASA5010 TrendMicro subscription based firewall. I am absolutely amazed that this product is offered for free given how good and powerful it is. It's filter is always up to date. It has already proved itself useful as i've recently got some angry users coming tell me they can no longer listen to their web radio. lol

Yep, even in the enterprise, OpenDNS is VERY useful


Adi

 

[thiggins]

Thanks for the post. How about the issue with search engines?

Does the TrendMicro product also do filtering and OpenDNS is better?

 

[brian_c]

Thank you for the OpenDNS tip. This is where I will start as it is free and I can try a bunch of searches on my machine at home with a "managed" account in OS X.

I knew about OpenDNS, as I use them for my DNS, but I didn't know of their ability to filter.

 

[brian_c]

Thanks for the post. How about the issue with search engines? <cut>

I think this is the hardest part. Last week Google added a safe search, but it looks very easy to circumvent. Changing browsers and resetting browser settings will kick you out of the safe mode. But it's a start, and if you are searching together with your kid for something it's a good buffer. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/locking-safesearch.html

It's a little ironic that still the best internet filtering is some version of POS (parent over shoulder).

 

[thiggins]

It's a little ironic that still the best internet filtering is some version of POS (parent over shoulder).

Not ironic at all. Just good parenting.

 

[sdeleeuw]

Another option, SpectrePro...

http://www.spector.com/spectresoft.html

A friend had this, or at least I think it was this, and he showed me a console where all of the emails his daughter had sent, all of her chat IMs, basically everything she did on the internet popped up in his console.

I think what Tim said about discussing it is important. Being clear that nothing you do on the internet is anonymous and not to do anything that will embarrass you or get you in trouble.

 

[GregN]

Thanks for the suggestion about OpenDNS. I had known about it, but not realized that it provided the services that it does.

I just ran a quick check of the free service and it suffers from the same search engine weaknesses. It doesn't block images from blocked categories.

Anyone know of kid-safe search engines that really work, especially for images?

SquidGuard, that runs on top of the Squid Proxy, has a setting to force the safesearch parameter on several search engines. It also has an extensive list of updated regularly categories.

Hope that helps

 

[vanlioncourt]

OpenDNS

Hi,

I've been using openDNS now for quite some time and I can say that it is very effective.

You can specify items that you'd like to block from pictures to search engines.
Here is a screenshot of my settings for our home network:

http://i582.photobucket.com/albums/ss261/spopovich2/Forum Pictures/OpenDNS.png

 

[stevech]

OpenDNS is apparently huge, and either is, or behaves as, a non-profit.

 

[spooony]

Parental control:
Norton Online Family
Windows Live Family Safety
Kidzui
K9 Web Protection
Parentalcontrolbar
Glubble
Safesquid
AOL Parental Controls
DansGuardian
Kidz CD
GoGoStat (Facebook)

Search engines with high privacy:
ixquick
Scroogle
Startpage
Duckduckgo

heres more
http://www.overclock.net/networking-security/1061506-ultimate-security-list.html

Web of Trust (WOT) - A free Internet security addon for your browser. It will keep you safe from online scams, identity theft, spyware, spam, viruses and unreliable shopping sites. WOT warns you before you interact with a risky website. This addon makes use of the OpenDNS project titled Phishtank to help detect bad websites. WOT is available as an add-on for Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox and as a bookmarklet for Opera, Google Chrome, Safari, and any other browser supporting Javascript and bookmarks/favorites. After downloading the addon to the user's browser, the WOT logo appears in the web browser's navigation toolbar. When the user navigates to a website, the color of the logo will change color based on a traffic light system (Green, Light Green, Yellow, Light Red or Red); depending on the reputation of a website determined by its users.