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Best way to block porn? via hardware is ideal
Kyzen
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Quick story:
My parents have some very religious neighbors, with a few kids. I was over at my parents house for dinner last night, and these neighbors were there. The big topic of conversation at the table for some reason was the fact that the neighbors kids (ages 9, 12, and 15) were caught looking up porn yesterday. My parents of course immediately suggested that I could help them block this. I was about to say I was too busy with work (otherwise known as The Burning Crusade
) when the neighbor mom said that that would be so sweet of me, and they'd be willing to pay me $50 an hour if I could get it done for them in under 6 hours.
So I agreed. I went over there, and they have a simple Linksys router, a WRT54GSv6. I tried the basic content filtering, and found I can block some sites directly, and others via keywords, but it is not even close to being a suitable filter, since I managed to find porn in less than 2 minutes of trying simple searches.
I asked what their budget was for hardware and/or software, and they said $250, give or take a little. Obviously the cheaper the better, and they hinted that if I kept it under $250, they'd give me part of the difference.
I have no idea why they're willing to pay so much to block porn, but whatever. It's going to pay for the deposit on my new apartment when I move
So, what I need:
-A high quality way to block porn, and other questionable content (bomb making came up :roll: ). Porn is most important though.
-A hardware solution is ideal. Is there any sort of firewall-type-box that can be stuck between the computers and the interwebs to filter traffic as it comes/goes? They've already said they don't care if it has a slight impact on their net speeds; all the adults use the internet for email and news, the kids play some games, but the parents feel they brought any punishment upon themselves.
-A software solution would be fine, but I worry that the (incredibly bright) kids would eventually find a way around it. Plus I'd feel bad cluttering up their machines with crap that would have a hugely negative impact on their speeds.
-The more user-friendly the GUI the better, as the parents want me to show them how to use it once it's set up.
Any suggestions?
My parents have some very religious neighbors, with a few kids. I was over at my parents house for dinner last night, and these neighbors were there. The big topic of conversation at the table for some reason was the fact that the neighbors kids (ages 9, 12, and 15) were caught looking up porn yesterday. My parents of course immediately suggested that I could help them block this. I was about to say I was too busy with work (otherwise known as The Burning Crusade
) when the neighbor mom said that that would be so sweet of me, and they'd be willing to pay me $50 an hour if I could get it done for them in under 6 hours.So I agreed. I went over there, and they have a simple Linksys router, a WRT54GSv6. I tried the basic content filtering, and found I can block some sites directly, and others via keywords, but it is not even close to being a suitable filter, since I managed to find porn in less than 2 minutes of trying simple searches.
I asked what their budget was for hardware and/or software, and they said $250, give or take a little. Obviously the cheaper the better, and they hinted that if I kept it under $250, they'd give me part of the difference.
I have no idea why they're willing to pay so much to block porn, but whatever. It's going to pay for the deposit on my new apartment when I move
So, what I need:
-A high quality way to block porn, and other questionable content (bomb making came up :roll: ). Porn is most important though.
-A hardware solution is ideal. Is there any sort of firewall-type-box that can be stuck between the computers and the interwebs to filter traffic as it comes/goes? They've already said they don't care if it has a slight impact on their net speeds; all the adults use the internet for email and news, the kids play some games, but the parents feel they brought any punishment upon themselves.
-A software solution would be fine, but I worry that the (incredibly bright) kids would eventually find a way around it. Plus I'd feel bad cluttering up their machines with crap that would have a hugely negative impact on their speeds.
-The more user-friendly the GUI the better, as the parents want me to show them how to use it once it's set up.
Any suggestions?
Kyzen on
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I've also never seen a software filter for porn that worked.
I suggested taking the computer out of the kids rooms, but that's apparently not an option, because they want their kids exposed to technology or something like that.
At the moment, software wise, I'm looking at NetNanny and Cyberpatrol.
Maybe talk them into getting Windows Vista? It has built in parental controls and account auditing. So, if they are trying to look at porn, the parents can find out and... uh.. hit them with a switch or whatever religious people do. You also wouldn't have to worry about bulky 3rd party software mucking things up.
That all depends on how good their machine is though.
Here's more on the parental controls vista offers
But then again, not even websense can totally block all porn .. as i can see a fair amount via GIS.
They are using a linksys that can have new firmware downloaded to it. .. which gives better options then default..
Either way .. you can educate the parents that you can only block by keyword, or by sites ouright. .. but you will never catch it all.. and in a fair amount of cases, block legit sites as well.
This will become evident when one of the kids needs to write a report on breast cancer. Or the cockles of the heart.
Librarians harbor a terrible secret. Find it.
Even on corporate networks with expensive programs that filter and block sites based upon a sites meta data, you can still access what they don't want you to in some way.
Really, as far as I've seen websense is really good, but as mentioned earlier, you can still find porn if its on a site that doesn't "look" like a porn site.
It's wierd to me that the parents care about their kids looking at porn, but don't want to monitor their childrens computer usage themselves directly. I know its not an answer, Just an observation.
EDIT: I suck at typing today
Making them not want to go to porn sites on that computer is going to be your best bet.
I think you have a winner here. Another good option is keylogging software
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My parents didn't trust me with a comp in my room for the longest time. Then again, back at that time we only had one comp for the family. Silly parents wanting to expose their kids to technology.
I'M A TWITTER SHITTER
If you go a software/hardware route you WILL be blocking them out of legit pages as well.
You're not L33T enough for IDI/RN FTP!
+1.
Add in whatever the router has, use some a program or 3 that will report to the parents whats going on. Tell the kids this is an unbeatable program that they cannot get past, and their parents will know whats what and all that jazz.
Take the parents aside, and tell them that there is no surefire way to do this 100%, that their involvement would be somewhat neccessary, but you've supplied them the best they can reasonably expect
I agree with everyone above that nothing will filter 100% and if it's really locked down then legit sites have a good chance of being blocked too.
If the kids are aware that their parents _know_ what they are surfing, that should be a decent enough deterrent. If not, then parenting skills need to be applied and their internet should be revoked as punishment. They can have the computer in their room to be "explosed to technology" but the kids should understand that the net needs to be used within the rules set forth by the parents.
The best way is to instil the fear of god into them. Somehow permanently lock the box and convince them you've mounted the keyboard logger on the inside that only the parents can access, (or acutally do it, drill a hole in the box feed the usb cord through and set it up in there) combined with a email monitor.
The system admin the HELL out of the kids logons (ie only let them launch programs, stop them access the history so they can delete in in firefox, IE (I know you can do this in IE not sure about firefox), and can you restrict if the can access the task manager?) and give the parents an actual password containing numbers and words that they don't choose. Then send it to switch user whenever the screen saver comes on which should be set to less than 2 minutes.
Explain to the parents how to check through the kids recently opened directory (for pictures/movies the one in C:\Doc..Settings... etc) and possibly lock from the kids deleting it if you can, how to use apply a filter to check the key logging and how to scan through their history. They also need to realise now though that they need to install everything on the computer themselves.
Or you know, they could always supervise their children.
Satans..... hints.....
Odds are, the parents don't even have to look, or care, as long as the kids think they do.
This gets a lot easier if you restrict them
Remember Thanatos, your average 15 year old uses MYSPACE
My bet is he is that dumb.
But it is a tad of an obscure thing to expect. Especially a hardware one. I would just get them some simple filter hardware/software, bunch it together with a keylogger and take the money. Either that or do nothing and hope the kids get better at looking at the pr0n.
Most of the software ones are easy to find and trick. Alot of them aren't even encrypted. it's not hard to open the character map and click out "www.somepornosite.com"
Kids are alot more leet than most parents want to give them credit for. My mom recruited ME to find out why her keylogging software wasn't working, somehow expecting me to be sympathetic to lying spying and fostering distrust.
I just asked my brother what the deal was, and he showed me his copy of DSL.
Mom = pwnt.
You're not L33T enough for IDI/RN FTP!
Actually we didn't look at the history until later. When I said they were caught looking at porn, I mean the parents walked into the eldest kids room and found him and the youngest with several dozen windows up (I'm sure most were popups).
A white-list is sounding good as well, I suggested the logger to the parents and they believe it's damaging to their kids spiritual health to even see boobies, so they'd prefer to block as much of it as possible. They understand that we'd be lucky to block 75% of the sites (I explained that more are created daily). So at this point we're looking for a cheap way to white-list sites that can be applied to 3 computers.
Anybody know the parental control abilities available on the major open-source firmwares for Linksys routers?
Even if he doesn't install one, I'd advise him to tell the kids that he's got a program taking screenshots at random intervals, so that if they do try to screw around with the programs installed, the parents will see. That should at least deter them from trying, knowing that unless they crack it on their first try that their parents will 'see' that they were trying to.
Keyloggers aren't really defeatable by a 15 y/o n00b. But it seems more relevant to just log what sites people are visiting (i.e. links).
What about something like netnanny? Isn't that a programmable whitelist? More expensive, though.
Exactly.
I suppose I was a more determined child than most. :?
You're not L33T enough for IDI/RN FTP!
I find that really problematic (not to mention weird, my parents fundie religion encourages all computers to be located in a public part of the house to keep a lid on shenanigans). If they're not willing to actually parent their kids, it is inevitable that they'll get around whatever you install - and you'll be blamed for not doing a good enough job. I think whitlelisting and proper popup blockers (and AdBlock with a decent filter) should protect the kids while still preventing valuable info like medical stuff from being blocked*, but you need to emphasise to the parents that there is no substitute for supervision. Point out that its about caring, blah blah, they should get the message.
*please try and avoid blocking health resources along with porn, particularly stuff on reproductive health. Children from very religious households often receive minimal support and education on things they actually need to know about their bodies in order to be safe and feel unable to communicate with their family about their needs. They often leave reproductive problems untreated (like infections) and are actually more likely to engage in high-risk sexual behaviours as a result. ALso, you don't want to prevent the parents from being able to access medical info either.
Seconded. I believe the sex chat in our house consisted of some prolonged stammering and the idea that Jesus is watching you beat it.
I suppose a kept URL history emailed at random intervals to the parents is probably the way to go, as it forces the kids to police themselves. Big Brother is certainly cost effective. It's good the parents are taking an interest, you can't have lil Johnny getting off in his room. Have to keep that to your best friend's sister's bathroom, yknow, where normal people go.
I don't believe it - I'm on my THIRD PS3, and my FIRST XBOX360. What the heck?