5punk

.

<a href="http://www.netnanny.com/">netnanny

Be there when they're on the internet, have the PC in the living room, not their bedrooms.

In my experience it's the only way - they'll always manage to find a legimate site they need for coursework etc, that's blocked by net nanny and such - then you'll have to unlock it.

They won't do shit if they think you can see them, even if you don't recognise their programs, just asking "what's that you're doing?" or "who are you talking to?" without standing at their shoulder all the while works wonders.

FatherJack wrote:Be there when they're on the internet, have the PC in the living room, not their bedrooms.

In my experience it's the only way - they'll always manage to find a legimate site they need for coursework etc, that's blocked by net nanny and such - then you'll have to unlock it.

They won't do shit if they think you can see them, even if you don't recognise their programs, just asking "what's that you're doing?" or "who are you talking to?" without standing at their shoulder all the while works wonders.

best advice

FatherJack wrote:Be there when they're on the internet, have the PC in the living room, not their bedrooms

That

When I was a young lad (As oppose to a silly young man) I never tried anything while others were in the room, and since our computer was in the same room as the tele that put pretty heavy restrictions on stuff I'd even think about trying. A watchful eye is always going to better than some programs, since from my experiences (and others) parents who ask questions like that arn't overly good at monitoring computer programs, while the kids know how to disable it anyway.

^
If they think they are likely to get busted, chances are they won't do a thing but a program isn't going to tell on them if they try something bad

I thought parental controls were for kids to stop their mum and dads accessing teh internetwebs?

You're telling me it's the other way around?

While i agree with the supervision thing, depending on the kids ages, they'll get left home alone and nothing will stop them then.

edit: unfortunately IE only when i tested it, but istr fairly good and keyword based.

http://weblocker.fameleads.com/

Absolutely agreed. Supervision.
However a service that is promising, set your broadband routers DNS servers to
67.138.54.100
207.225.209.66
Obviously make sure there is a decent passowrd on the router.

See http://www.scrubit.com/ for more info. It's not perfect, it missed a few things on my tests. But it's free and if you don't like it it's easy to uninstall (set your routers DNS back again)

Then it'll cover the whole network no matter what OS without extra programs etc.

Also modifying your hosts file can be quite effective too. be aware that if your browsing slows down you might need to remove it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file
http://www.hostsfile.info/

You smell like a spammer, but the info is useful, weird.

I'm not, I'm not affiliated to either of those places
I'm a mate of Fears who's told me on IRC to come on the forums. I've registered and posted here and hhe's just chastised me for not going to the "Introduce yourself" forum. I'll go there now.

Anyway, hello I'll try and post less like a spammer in future

Hah! Good show.
You didn't seem quite Russian enough to be a spammer

ahh, loes and no probs

Stoat wrote:Hah! Good show.
You didn't seem quite Russian enough to be a spammer

That seems terribly xenophobic now I come to read it again.
I apologise to our Russian readers*.

*you never know.

You don't seem to mind offending the spammers though.
Spammers have feelings too!
(Which is good, so they can feel it when you are kicking them)
Anyway, lets get back on topic

I found in the course of my work that typically the kids are much more savvy than the parents computer wise.

So leaving it to a program in their bedrooms invariably means they Google for "how to remove netnanny" (and lets face it what do you do if you legitimately lose the password etc?) and the thing either gets removed or (what I've found) they stuff the computer up - leaving the parent with the bill of fixing it.

There are also some routers that offer this type of thing as a service , just like stuffit, but because you pay for it you get a better service. I think router based is the only way - check out http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1619375,00.asp or indeed http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=router ... al+control

But honestly, remembering what it was like to be a kid whose parents tried to stop using the computer sometimes as punishment (20 years ago, waaaay before the Internet was around properly), kids are much,much more resourceful than you can imagine.
My folks would leave the house with the power leads for the computer and the UHF lead for the TV, and I would fashion new leads from other bits of wire, old plugs etc ....

Supervise, supervise, supervise - and then when you aren't there hide several things that can't be replaced easily so it doesn't work - and change those pieces regularly and then try not to go mad

Could you run it through a proxy? Have netnanny running on your mini computer so there's no actual programs on the family pc?

Stoat wrote:That seems terribly xenophobic now I come to read it again.
I apologise to our Russian readers*.

*you never know.

Like our latest sign up?

Belarusian, apparently.
He's not activated his account yet. I'm giving him till midnight.