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What Filters Are Right For Kids?
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Mar 17, 2009 12:20 PM
from the cue-the-scorn-cannons dept.
from the cue-the-scorn-cannons dept.
WaywardGeek writes "My daughter is using phrases like 'hot guys,' and soon will have a chat about the birds and the bees. I believe in letting kids discover the world as it is, and have no Internet controls on any of our systems, which are mostly Linux based. However, it's not fair for aggressive porn advertisers to splash sex in her face without her permission. My question is: What Linux-based Internet filtering solution do Slashdot dads favor, and do they hinder a child's efforts to learn about the world?"
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mgessner writes "My kids are starting to want email accounts of their own. Even though gmail does a pretty good job of filtering spam, it's not perfect. Searching the web the other day for kid-safe email, I found a few sites that say they can do the job. What do others do for their kids' email? Pay for it? Just use a free service like gmail or yahoo? I don't pay for email accounts out of my own pocket, so I don't really see the need, but if the cost was a few bucks a month, I'd do it."
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The simple one. (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep the computer in the living room.
Re:The simple one. (Score:5, Insightful)
That isn't going to help against accidental clicks on spam links that take you to places you didn't want to go. What the OP wants is something that prevents accidental exposure to offensive content.
Parent
Re:The simple one. (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to ask...do people REALLY that often, hit porn sites by accident?
I mean, I can count on one hand (I know I know) the number of times I've actually had porn flash up on my browser when I was not looking for it....in all these years.
How bad a problem is this actually? From anecdotal evidence, I'd have to guess if someone has porn on the screen....they were looking for it.
Parent
Re:The simple one. (Score:5, Interesting)
Or, "I wonder what this ad is about, I think I'll click it".
It doesn't happen to people who are more experienced internet users, but it does happen. If you didn't use the internet at that age, it probably didn't happen to you.
Parent
Re:The simple one. (Score:5, Insightful)
I say, put the computer in the living room, Teach your damn kid what a red flag for a suspicious link/website looks like, and use firefox/noscript/adblock. Those three things should be enough for 99% of people on the net. Otherwise, she's looking for it.
Parent
Re:The simple one. (Score:5, Funny)
"Daddy what's that?"
"That's how babies are made sweetheart."
"Oh. Do you and mommy do that?"
"Not anymore. (sigh)"
Parent
Re:The simple one. (Score:5, Funny)
Think back to when you were ten, you put a random term into Google
When I was ten, a google was a fixed (i.e., not random) value. Also:
So, no, I can't relate to your example. Now get off my lawn.
Parent
Re:The simple one. (Score:5, Funny)
Or maybe his brain has started to decline, and he's just forgotten how to spell it....
Guilty as charged. Now GET OFF MY...
...have you seen my glasses?
Parent
Re:The simple one. (Score:5, Funny)
I have to ask...do people REALLY that often, hit porn sites by accident?
Yes, every time my wife or boss walks in and there's porn on the screen? Accident.
Parent
Re:The simple one. (Score:4, Informative)
I have to ask...do people REALLY that often, hit porn sites by accident?
I mean, I can count on one hand (I know I know) the number of times I've actually had porn flash up on my browser when I was not looking for it....in all these years.
How bad a problem is this actually? From anecdotal evidence, I'd have to guess if someone has porn on the screen....they were looking for it.
Depends on the situation, the user, etc... But, yes, it does happen accidentally.
You can throw some pretty innocent phrases into Google and get some pretty interesting results. Some torrent search sites, which are very popular for folks looking to download music, have pretty explicit advertising on them. And it's entirely too easy to wind up on somebody's mailing list and get deluged with advertisements for various adult services. Some malware pops up advertising as well, sometimes it is of the adult variety.
Parent
Re:The simple one. (Score:4, Insightful)
However, I'm not going to say it's impossible. I know of people that have accidentally gone to whitehouse.com rather than
Parent
Re:The simple one. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:The simple one. (Score:5, Funny)
Let's try another, whitehouse, let's see what the president is doi...
Clinton was President then, wasn't he?
Parent
Use OpenDNS and a hosts file (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.opendns.com/ [opendns.com]
You can configure what levels of filters to use and even customize the page that opendns supplies when a forbidden link is clicked.
They are also working to block some of the botnet phone homes.
All you need to do is use their name servers. You can set up an account and configure what gets blocked and what doesn't.
Also check out an enhanced hosts file at http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm [mvps.org].
That will block a lot of requests from ever leaving the computer. You can also add in whatever others you want as well.
Parent
Re:Use OpenDNS and a hosts file (Score:5, Informative)
Dude, right on! I'm the original poster, and I have to tell you, this is exactly what I was looking for. I've set filter level to 'medium', for malware/phishing and porn. As the kids grow old enough to figure out how to get around it, they're probably old enough to handle unfiltered content.
I hate to sound like an add for these guys, but hey, it's free, and in a few minutes of testing, it blocked 100% of the porn sites I tried to visit, but nothing from wikipedia.org. Search for 'sex' on wikipedia, and you still get a useful, informative site. Search for 'sex' on Google, and not one hard-core porn site is allowed, but metacafe.com gets through. The 'cached' links from Google show hard-core porn thumbnails, though. Not perfect, but way better than I was expecting! Thanks!
Parent
Re:Use OpenDNS and a hosts file (Score:5, Insightful)
I never understood parents that want to filter their kids internet connection. They'll have to live with the fact that the world is a bad place, and they should learn that naturally - not all at once when they turn 18 and you kick them out.
Based on the article, he doesn't think she is ready yet and when she is he will happily reduce the filtering or remove it altogether.
This is exactly the sort of responsible and appropriate response that should be encouraged, by the way. We make our own decisions about what we want censored, and we take action to filter it. No running to the Nanny State and demanding that they protect the children.
Parent
Re:The simple one. (Score:5, Informative)
Sure it does.
1) /etc/hosts - Unwieldy, but effective. ...
2) apt-get install bind - A little better, zone files are available
3) OpenDNS and the like...
4) Privoxy
5) Squid+Junkbuster
6)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The simple one. (Score:5, Interesting)
The truth is, the best situation is to educate the child enough that they can be trusted to navigate the online world without either visiting porn inappropriately (i.e. w/ anyone else around) or downloading malware. The reality is, you have to educate children while using some protections against their mistakes.
So, teach her about sex, etc. Explain the issues as best you can, and discourage her from visiting it too much (and certainly set rules). But don't pretend she'll never check it out. The truth is, there's no harm in her checking it out occasionally.
Malware, on the other hand, is actually destructive, hence the use of spam, virus, etc. filters. So, teach her about it, hope she doesn't accidentally infect your system, but use tools to support her.
The key idea is to support your child's growth, not to restrict it.
Parent
Mod parent down (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Depends on how fine you grind them (Score:5, Funny)
Cheesecloth works pretty good to get the chunks out.
They shouldn't be smoking at all! (Score:5, Funny)
Filter or no filter, its just bad for them especially at that age.
Adblock (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Adblock (and NoScript) (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Privoxy (Score:4, Informative)
If he wants a filter that is more difficult to bypass by the child, Privoxy is pretty handy.
Well, he specifically said he doesn't. He said he "believes in letting kids discover the world as it is" and that it's not fair for porn advertisers to display sex "without her permission," he didn't say his. I think that means he wants her to be able to bypass it if she wants to, but doesn't want her to be exposed to things she's not specifically looking for.
Pretty reasonable stance, and I think adblock is the way to go.
Parent
Yeeeah . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yeeeah . . . (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Use openDNS (Score:5, Informative)
Adblock (Score:5, Insightful)
I never, ever see porn ads because I've got Adblock Plus installed in FF. If she prefers IE for some weird reason then just put an ad-filtering web-proxy on your network like Junkbuster [junkbuster.com].
Redirect all outbound connection attempts on port 80 through your router to that proxy and you'll be good to go. That way she won't have porn ads splashed in her face but she'll still be able to Google for hot guys [google.com] with SafeSearch turned off :).
Re:Adblock (Score:4, Funny)
If she prefers IE for some weird reason then just put an ad-filtering web-proxy on your network like Junkbuster [junkbuster.com].
If she is clever enough to get IE to run properly on the aforementioned linux systems, she is clever enough to configure her own porn-blocker...
Parent
"hot guys" should redirect to Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
That should scare her away for a couple of decades.
OpenDNS (Score:4, Informative)
Re:OpenDNS (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as "filters" for kids - I grew up with a liberal(ish) mother who taught Sexual Education courses for a while. I was exposed to all of her programs, from "abstinence only" to "safer sex" and everything in between, and to be honest, what I learned from that level of exposure is that the BEST defense is a good offense. Teach your kid the values of sexuality you feel are healthiest and know that no matter how much you try to keep them protected from exposure to "bad" things, they are going to find those things on their own, one way or another. Giving kids the proper tools and knowledge on how to deal with the "bad things" is far better than trying to protect them with any sort of shell.
Parent
Google moderate safe search (Score:5, Insightful)
That seems reasonable enough. If your daughter isn't actually going looking for porn.
If she is, you need to have a talk. Not porn=bad because that won't work. Rather: porn=unrealistic. And that she needs to understand that much of what she will see is the result of payment to foolish and desperate people.
Oh, and build up her self-esteem. That is the critical factor in teen girls getting into situations they're not ready for.
Re:Google moderate safe search (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, IMO, this is the BEST thing that you can do for your daughter, regardless of what the problem is.
Parent
Re:Google moderate safe search (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
None of us were filtered!! (Score:4, Insightful)
And we all turned out alright.
Your kids are gonna find out. Accept it. The right approach is education. And not retarded "well, ya see, when a boy and girl really, really like each other" education. Real education. And approval thereof. Tell them about condoms. Tell them about birth control. Tell them about a pumpkin-sized blood-covered creature ripping out of the girl's crotch leaving behind so much damage that the doctor quits using stitches and opts to replace everything with a steel plate.
We must have different definitions (Score:5, Insightful)
It may go against conventional wisdom on Slashdot, but filters don't particularly hinder a child's efforts to learn about the world. If there is something that they want to see, they can ask you if it's ok and you can unblock it. That's the 21st century version of the way that parents used to do it. Part of being a parent is being a gatekeeper. Some information your kids just need to be largely innocent of until they become adults. It's one thing to know that the ugly side of the world exists. It's another thing to take few measures to stop your kids from participating in it out of curiosity.
AdBlock (Score:3, Informative)
Being Linux, you're likely using FireFox or one of it's builds (eg. Debian's IceWeasel). I recommend the AdBlock add-on, and possibly the NoScript add-on as well. In the process of blocking ads in general, AdBlock's going to get most of the porn ads as well. Set up bogofilter for e-mail filtering and you'll quickly get all the spam (including all the porn spam) diverted into a junk folder (Thunderbird has similar filtering built-in with it's junk-mail flagging feature, I use bogofilter mainly because I alternate between Thunderbird and Pine as my mail readers and want the junk-mail filtering to happen regardless of which one I'm using at the moment). That should take care of the majority of the problem. What's left will be search result spam, and those are mostly obvious from reading the result without having to visit the site to find out.
You need to have that chat (Score:5, Funny)
NOW.
Filter out the obvious stuff. You won't stop a dedicated teen from finding what they want, but you can try to stop them from getting things they don't want that are inappropriate.
I have a daughter and a son, and yes, knowing there will be a day when my kids are looking for 'Hot [Gender of choice]' scares the shit out of me.
DansGuardian (Score:4, Informative)
Either put it on their desktop or install on a server if they use OSX/Microsoft windows.
Use my whitelist (Score:5, Funny)
I only whitelist the sites that teach good lessons for their development into adulthood:
Zombo.com: You can do ANYTHING there.
Goatse: What better way to show what one can accomplish if you put your mind to it?
2G1C: Teamwork and empowerment
Lemonparty: Appreciation for the elderly.
I'd list more, but CPS is here. Must be donation season or something.
You do the only logical thing (Score:5, Funny)
One father's experience (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been a single father for most of the past sixteen years. I did hardly anything to screen out offensive material when my daughter was younger. Not only that, I let her have her own computer in her room, so I wasn't there to watch over her shoulder either.
What I did do was set up transparent proxying through Squid on the Linux box that runs as our house firewall so I could scan the logs from time to time and see where she was going. She knew that her usage was being logged, but beyond that I did nothing at all. In reality a much bigger problem than porn was the extent to which supposedly kid-friendly sites actually contained a large proportion of drive-by installs mostly for advertising crap. I ended up with a Squid acl list largely composed of places like atwola.com and Gator. I never had to add a block for any site containing pornographic or other questionable materials. After a couple of rounds of cleaning this type of junk off her (then Windows) computer, I decided the only solution was to block it at the router. These days she uses Ubuntu, so adware is much less of a problem.
The bigger problem actually began when I let her have an email account (indeed she owns her own domain). Despite years of experience scanning email for myself and my clients, it was still impossible to keep the occasional attached gif from getting through. Unfortunately these tend to the more disgusting end of the porn spectrum; I would have been less disturbed by her seeing more conventional sexual behaviors. The couple of times this happened she mentioned it to me and said she had deleted the offending message immediately. We had a talk about not opening messages from people you didn't know, but often a graphic will show up in the message preview windows (in Thunderbird in our case) without any active choice by the reader.
Now I only have the one girl, so I don't know how generalizable this experience might be. I do know that, at seventeen, she harbors little or no interest in porn and had, if anything, even less interest in it at 11-13. If she were male, the story might have been different. However my attitudes about her Internet usage were consistent with the general degree of freedom I permitted her in other realms of life. She always had a lot of freedom and today seems much more mature and self-disciplined than some of her friends and acquaintances who grew up in stricter households. I'm proud to call her my daughter.
"soon"? (Score:4, Insightful)
My daughter is using phrases like 'hot guys,' and soon will have a chat about the birds and the bees
Since there isn't always a clear red flag to let you know the absolute last minute you can put that conversation off, you should get it out of the way when the time is approaching. Procrastination here is not a good thing.
By the time my parents worked up the nerve, my school had already provided me with good sex-ed. I think in some respects I knew more than they did, which was kinda funny. Correcting your parents during this chat just makes them turn different shades of red and purple. Not many schools do that though, but if you wait too long you too may get to experience that.
Re:How about.... (Score:5, Insightful)
He's just looking for an ad filter, he's clearly stated that he doesn't want to censor the internet.
Good for him too, I started online at the age of twelve in 94' (NCSA Mosiac FTW!) and eventually figured out how to setup a USEnet client. Abpe.* and all its life lessons (women do that with horses??) followed. I made a bit of money by selling those lessons on floppy disk at school too, it was a step above the random porn mags that seem to litter all the woods in this country!
Parent
Re:How about.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:How about.... (Score:5, Insightful)
A parents job is not to shadow their children around 24x7 for the first 18 years of their life, that is just absurd, and part of the general "paranoia" that our culture seems to be cultivating right now.
A parents job is to establish a safe environment in which their children can grow up in, and learn how to be an adult in.
Parent
Re:How about.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's this funny thing about being a parent... you see, you have other things to do than be your child's content censor all day long. I'm a single father of four, and I also have to do things like cook dinner, help my other children with their homework, clean, go to the bathroom, etc. etc. If I were to attempt to monitor my children's Internet usage like you demand, they would get to use the Internet... oh, around 15 minutes a week. Maybe.
Now, maybe in some elevated sense of the word I "ought" to be able to watch each of my four children like a hawk, all the time. But I can't, and a bit of content filtering allows my kids to get the benefits of Internet access without me having to be a content Nazi.
(And before you criticize me for having four children, originally my wife was a stay-at-home mother, but she died of cancer. So frankly if you want to blame me for having too many kids you can go to hell. There is something sick about a society that insists on a level of public depravity that makes it impossible for parents to have enough children to even maintain its population.)
Parent
Re:What Filters Are Right For Kids? (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't born with one.
Parent