Parental Control Software Question - Page 2

PaulGH · #16 Feb 21, '12, 7:04 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nechasin

I agree with most of your post, and I do talk to my kids about what they are allowed to do on the internet.

I have the software installed not to prevent them from intentionally going to a website, but going to a website unintentionally. Have you ever typed www.whitehouse.com instead of www.whitehouse.gov. An extremely easy mistake to make for an adult much less a kid. I've done searches or clicked links myself and got the warning page and had to think twice about what I was doing.

You insinuate that by installing safeguards you are not engaging in responsible parenting. I would have to disagree with that statement. I believe that with the extremes that some adult sites go to to get internet traffic, that you are not engaging in responsible parenting if you don't install some kind of protection to protect their innocence.

I would agree with this as well. In our case, the filtering software is just as much for the adults in the house as it is for the kids, because I don't want to accidentally go to an inappropriate site when I'm browsing the internet either.

ThyKingdomCome · #17 Feb 21, '12, 7:25 am

It is true that the best protection is a firm foundation in values and education about the danger of giving in to temptation.

Right now, at the age of 10, my ds is quite trustworthy. I don't have any question of whether or not he will INTENTIONALLY get on a bad website, or do something he shouldn't. It's the unintentional stuff that I'm worried about. The thing is, if he has to google something for school, right now the only safe way to do it is to tell him to close his eyes or look away when I hit the "enter" key. Even though he will be less than 5 feet away from me while he's online, it only takes a fraction of a second to have a picture of a "foxy lady" burned into your brain when all you wanted was to find out about the different varieties of foxes in the country. He doesn't even know that "fox" is a term used sexually, and he doesn't need to learn that and a million other double meanings while he's doing academic research. That's why I need parental controls. Plus the less he encounters accidentally now, while he is prepubescent and still only cares about legos, the less the computer will be a source of temptation as he moves into that stage.

Parental controls are definitely not to take the place of parenting. They are simply a helpful tool, without which, young innocent children would likely lose their innocence much sooner than necessary.

journey00 · #18 Feb 22, '12, 8:18 am

I second the K9, we use it and it works great. I hear ya about your 10 y/o being trustworthy & you are trying to prevent anything from popping up...I have a 12 y/o that is also that way.

Just in case he tries to figure out how to get around it & you use Mozilla Firefox...you must disable a setting in Firefox where it doesn't remember your password.

My now 21 yr old came for a visit and bypassed the K9 by going to the Firefox web browser and looking up the password. But, he's very tech savvy & maybe your son isn't quite there..yet. Or maybe he simply doesn't care to by pass it.

Sorry, I don't know exactly what the setting is but I bet you could do a quick Google key word search & you could find out.

Grace78 · #19 Feb 15, '13, 8:51 am

Hi everyone,

I have a question about online monitoring and as this seems to be a similar topic, I thought I might ask you guys.

I also think that you should start with talking to your kid and making sure they trust you. That's why I don't want to install software that blocks stuff; I want my son (16 yrs) to make the decision himself. I had a discussion with a friend about it the other day though and she said that kid still make mistakes and might need a 'parental nudge' to correct it. She recommended software that blocks stuff as well but like I said, I don't want to go that far. Instead of that, I thought I might just have a look at what he's been doing now and then to see if there's something we may need to talk about... I've been having a look and found this thing you can plug into the computer that records stuff: http://www.refog.com/hardware-keyloggers.html

What do you guys think: is it a good idea to have something like that, or will it make my son feel betrayed, like mandajane said? I'd like to hear your opinions...

PaulGH · #20 Feb 15, '13, 11:58 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grace78

Hi everyone,

I have a question about online monitoring and as this seems to be a similar topic, I thought I might ask you guys.

I also think that you should start with talking to your kid and making sure they trust you. That's why I don't want to install software that blocks stuff; I want my son (16 yrs) to make the decision himself. I had a discussion with a friend about it the other day though and she said that kid still make mistakes and might need a 'parental nudge' to correct it. She recommended software that blocks stuff as well but like I said, I don't want to go that far. Instead of that, I thought I might just have a look at what he's been doing now and then to see if there's something we may need to talk about... I've been having a look and found this thing you can plug into the computer that records stuff: http://www.refog.com/hardware-keyloggers.html

What do you guys think: is it a good idea to have something like that, or will it make my son feel betrayed, like mandajane said? I'd like to hear your opinions...

I would really recommend that everyone use some kind of filtering software, whether K9, OpenDNS, or something else. This software is not just for kids. I find it valuable even as an adult, to make it less likely that I will accidentally stumble on a porn site or something else inappropriate. (The difference of course is that I can override the block with a password. But just the fact that I see that a page is blocked is enough to make me wary of going to that page, and I don't override the block unless I am sure that the page is OK.) Considering the incomprehensibly vast amount of filth that is on the internet, I think that some kind of filtering software (or DNS filtering such as OpenDNS, which does essentially the same thing) is an absolute essential for internet browsing, for people of any age.

As far as tracking what your kids do online, I do think that you should know what your kids are doing online. One good (and simple) way to do this is to keep the family computer(s) in a common room in the house, like the living room -- no computers or other internet-capable devices in bedrooms or other places where browsing can be done in complete privacy. This is harder than it used to be, because of portable computing devices like smartphones, tablets, and even laptops. But it can be done, and no child (or even adult) needs a smartphone -- though I am sure it would be hard to convince many teenagers of that fact.

If you do monitor your kids' actions online, I think that it is best to let them know that you are doing so, and to explain why. But having said that, I have not dealt with teenagers yet, so I speak from theory, not from experience.

Also keep in mind that your teenager probably knows more about computers than you do, and they can find ways to work around some of these internet filtering and monitoring tools.

Grace78 · #21 Feb 19, '13, 1:23 am

I agree with having the equipment in a family room, and also letting them know that you can see everything. This might be enough to make them think twice about what they look at.
Thank you.

fullofgraze · #22 Mar 20, '13, 2:18 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by ThyKingdomCome

Thanks everyone. It sounds like K9 might be a good place for us to start, and it looks like I may be stuck avoiding images altogether for now too...

Hello, I recently stumbled across the fact that you can lock google safe search in the on position. http://support.google.com/websearch/...r=3037047&rd=1

Don't know if that link worked, but you can google "lock safe search"

We are just starting to look for parental controls, our eldest daughter is yet 6 and has just started doing some school work on the computer

Peace