As a parent and a techno-geek, I have struggled with providing access to the wonders of the Internet for young people, while protecting them from the not-so-wondrous parts of the world wide web.
The ISPs and the PC makers are no help here, as they just effectively just give you ‘the road and the car’, but no ability to control anything with any real precision.
Specifically, there are some solutions, but they are way beyond the technical abilities of the parents, or they are just a pain to support.
Sure, some folks will say ‘just trust your kids’ or ‘my little snowflake would never goto a bad website’ but I believe in the basic doctrine of ‘trust, yet verify’, or more typically ‘trust as far as you can throw 1000 lbs of depleted uranium’, which aint far.
There are some controls on the PC: Microsoft builds some things into the OS and browser, you can add add-ons to Firefox (e.g. Web Of Trust).
There are tons of programs to lock-down the PC: NetNanny, K9 Web Protection, CyberSitter, etc, etc.
There are also network-centric approaches, like implementing a content-filtering proxy server (e.g. WebSense Express, AllegroSurf, Untangle, SafeSquid).
But all of the above are some mixture of: Ineffective for smart kids, a pain in the neck to support, and often costly. Sometimes they break more things than they fix, so when you allow a web site, you’re suddenly having to allow Adobe, so flash works, then Sun, so Java works, then two hours later the kiddo can goto SesameStreet.com.
I stumbled across a better way: control DNS.
I have no interest in DynDNS, I don’t work there or sell anything for them.
DynDNS has a cool free offering called ‘Internet Guide’ which allows you to setup a controlled DNS service for one PC at home, or the whole network.
This solution lets you make one tiny change in your home PC or router and all DNS requests go through the DynDNS servers. You decide what sites and categories you want DynDNS to allow.
On the configuration page for DynDNS Internet Guide, you choose what categories to block (e.g. gambling, porn, malware).
Once you check the boxes, all computers, game devices, and smartphones in your home cannot get to that content category. You can also explicitly block or deny certain sites. No changes to the client.
Thus for a friend’s house, who has two teenage children, I created a DynDNS account, setup their home router to point to it, selected what content to allow/disallow, and that’s it. I can administer it remotely, since I manage their router remotely. As long as the router is password protected, there’s no easy way the kids can get around it, and no changes had to be made to any PCs. If the kid is a techno-wiz, you can lock his/her DNS settings, but that’s typically not needed.
http://www.dyndns.com/services/dynguide/
