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Child Protection on the Internet
bombardier
Moderator Mod Emeritus
Moderator Mod Emeritus
I'm looking for some information/links/experience advice on keeping kids out of the big shit holes on the Internet and also getting your computer infected/borked. Stuff like programs, schedulers, firewalls. I know about the obvious stuff like 'unplug the Internet' or 'it's the parent's responsibility to monitor their children online', so let's stay away from that.
bombardier on
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2) Simple would be the IE content advisor turned on. Google it.
3) If I had to do it, and block shit 100%, i'd probably set up a whitelist. A free option would be to remove DNS from the PC and add the few sites you want them to access to the local hosts file.
but on to real solutions.
a) use firefox.
1) adblockPlus extension
2) flashblock extension
b) thunderbird email client
these two things negate the major vectors of infection: emailed virii and activeX malware. the two extensions will kill most pop ups, while replacing flash content with a play button. this cuts down drastically the amount of crap out there.
as for keeping their wee little minds clean of goatse, well... there is nothing short of unplugging the internet that will truely work. if they want it, they can find it. filters are stopgap measures at best. cause the first thing they come across as blocked is going to make them google at way around it. better to put the computer in a common area, and educate them on acceptable use.
You could also try something like CyberPatrol, which admittedly does work pretty well, but you have to pay for a subscription to keep things up to date (daily list/definition downloads, etc)
I don't believe it - I'm on my THIRD PS3, and my FIRST XBOX360. What the heck?
Anyway, we've had a few threads about effective anti-virus programs, especially the free ones, that you may want to check out too. Having whatever you use from that on your own machine would be a good idea too. Just because it doesn't infect the kid's machine doesn't mean it won't bork another machine if the kid decides to pass on the "neat link/file" they found.
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Telling a kid not to google a certain thing is probably the surest way to get them to that site/content.
Ok, I can see that. Frankly, my parents never warned me about anything or told me to stay away from stuff, and I never went looking for trouble (I remember when www.whitehouse.com* was on the news during Monica-gate, and I didn't care enough to go to that site). Maybe it's because that was the early-ish days of the internet, when insidious stuff was less pervasive. I dunno. Even these days, I have to either be completely retarded and download random shit off sketchy websites, or go looking for porn to really expose myself to anything disgusting or malicious. Some torrent or warez sites have porn pop-up or banner ads, but that's pretty much all I've seen. I still think that the most important factor is the kid himself, because you can't really block out every possible objectionable content.
*Apparently, that site is still up, just not featuring "hot interns" anymore.
Although, to keep stuff clean, I do like the idea of using Linux or some non-Windows environment. Definitely wouldn't be using IE/OE in any way shape or form. Ditched them years ago and have not looked back.
Whitelists seem like a good idea for younger children though who just want to play games and not accidently stumble onto some shit.
Thats probably the best, but instead of powering off the computer install a VNC server on the kids computer so the parent can tap in and see whatever the kid sees.
Or do the non-lazy thing and get up and look over the kids shoulder.
My game computer has 3 accounts on it: Mine, a "guestadmin" account with a password my husband knows, and "anyone" that has no password and is to be used by anyone other than me who is not explicitly installing something.
The kid, or any guests we may have over, can go on-line and whatever they're doing isn't going to be able to install shit. Not a perfect solution, but it's a step in the right direction.
Also, Firefox rather than IE.
I also run spybot resident, and have it scan on a daily basis. For the most part, I just catch ad cookies, but keeping them cleaned up makes it easier to find the real problems.
UltraVNC is a good free one, btw.
You can also do stuff in your home Router if you have one, like limit the times when the computer they use can get to the internet.