Kids computer advice

[RhinoZ]

Hi Ya Folks,
Well my little girls are not so little anymore, My oldest is 9 years old. So I'd like to setup a separate computer for them to use for school and their games and stuff. I knew the time would come but Wow does it ever crept up fast.
Up until now I was able to keep them on Barbie.com, pbskids, nickjr etc etc. But with friends in school having older siblings, my daughter knows about youtube, msn and google.
So I was wondering what some of you do go about protecting or sheltering your kids from the evils of internet. No the computer will not be in her room or anything like that, and I will be supervising her usage, I'm more worried about her seeing content I don't want her to see.
I haven't had a chance to look into this yet as I have no idea what available, except for looking up Net Nanny, But I was hoping to start here and get some excellent advice from you guys first.
Many thanks
R.

[degrub]

a white list in my firewall for sites they are allowed to visit.
plus a filtering proxy when they need to be more adventurous.

you could check out

http://www.trusteli.com/consumer/content-filtering.php

for an all in one.

[Maggi]

Hi RhinoZ,

to be honest, I never really dug into it that far, but it'll come at me at some point of time


so my starting point would be

Firefox

http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

NoScript addon

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722

AdBlockPlus addon

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

and Glubble seems to come in handy, but I didn't really look into it yet

http://www.glubble.com/

Cheers,
Maggi

[Gurm]

My current solution? Surf with Logan, and trust him not to get into trouble.

Once he's old enough to WANT to see net.pr0n, he'll be old enough to circumvent whatever measures I put in place. *shrug*

[Jammrock]

I figure the only way to stop a kid from surfing porn is to 1) put the computer in a public place and block login times when no one is there or you are asleep, 2) block access to USB devices, CD/DVD, installing software, the BIOS and booting to anything but the hard drive. 1) seems to be the easiest way, and probably the smartest for a parent as it shows at least a little trust.

[cjolley]

We use glubble and have a couple of ie content filters running.
Can't tell that the ie filters do much.
Glubble is nice it forces you to white list new sites. (the kid asks permission and you log in to allow it, or not)

The main thing though is that her PC has it's monitor facing the door to the office.
Simply being there is the best defense.

[RhinoZ]

Hey thanks folks,
That glubble extension looks like a must have.
I guess maybe I'm just overreacting a bit. The computer will be set up on the main floor so supervision will not be the problem. But I am surprised that, that is all you guys do. The way I hear kids carelessly downloading music, MSN, and stuff, I thought there would be more controls set in place. Especially with alot of you that value your rig as golden.

@ Gurm your comment made me laugh, I thought for sure you would try and keep up with the challenge.
Thanks a mint folks.

[Helevitia]

I put my son's computer next to mine and his back facing me so I could look over his shoulder anytime I wanted. Secondly, Linksys routers allow you to boot someone off the internet whenever you want. Basically, internet for his computer was on for 2 hours/day even though we only let him on 1 hour/day. I definitely made sure the internet was in accessible while we were sleeping and other computers in the house are password protected.

Fast forward to today. He is now 18. I bought him a laptop and severely limit his bandwidth and I still cut off the internet while I am sleeping. I know he downloads music constantly, but that is his decision now that he is 18. He knows how I feel about it. It must be painfully slow for him though. BTW, the way I limit his bandwidth is, I have a separate wifi connection just for him and that is plugged into a Linksys SRW2008 which has QoS controls.

Oh, I also deleted his IE icon off his other computer when he was younger and forced him to use Firefox. He didn't know enough to find the .exe file.

[Fat Tone]

My son is 10 and has had his own computer in his bedroom for a couple of years. I used to disable his internet before 7am and after 8pm but that is it.

Before he had it I made very sure he was aware of the risks of the internet, and to his credit whenever he wants to visit a new site he asks me first. His email is all copied to me at the moment, not something I'm very comfortable with tbh. Any thing that requires registration etc he always clears with me first.

I do go through the logs occasionally and I've found no evidence of wrongdoing or coverup.

Having said that, I reckon he's about to discover more of whats available out there so I'm about to be more careful. This month's PC Pro magazine (DVD edition) has a complete parental control application with it (sorry, can't remember the name right now) which I shall be installing when I have the chance.

[Gurm]

Seriously, it depends on the kid.

I think Claymonkey can back me up that with Logan... if I just tell him not to look at naughty things he won't. Now, do I BLINDLY trust him? No. But a little social engineering goes a long way.

Jacob, on the other hand... I'll have to lock things down tight for that one. Once he learns to read he's going to be DANGEROUS.

[MultimediaMan]

I am experimenting with Dan's Guardian on my Smoothwall a proxy content filter... so far there is little not to like.

As far as dealing with the intentionally troublesome rying to boot into alternative OS and the like, check out what Intel's vPro Generation 4 and 5 will bring to the table.... a completely dynamic network-manageable BIOS. Develped for Standalone Kiosks, they will prove popular for Student PCs.