How To Configure Real PC Parental Controls?

Orange Crush writes "As the resident computer geek in an office full of accountants, my boss recently asked me how she could reasonably keep her teenage son from using the family computer to 'access inappropriate sites.' I of course responded 'Give up now. There's nothing in this world that can keep a determined teenager from acquiring porn.' Sadly, she was dissatisfied with this answer. I mentioned that there was in fact software available for this purpose, but that all of it was trivially easy to bypass for a clever young mind. I really can't think of another answer. She could password protect the BIOS to prevent booting a different OS, but that's easily defeated with a screwdriver at most. The only solutions I can think of involve upstream firewalls/proxies/etc to which I gleefully redirected her to her ISPs tech support number. As much as I disagree with her reasoning — and ignoring the obvious 'go to a friend's house' loophole — is there really any other way (on a home budget) to netnanny a household computer?"

Re:logging firewall and TALKING

[mcspoo]

So you have the Great Firewall of China in your house?

Household WWW/Internet Filtering

[lorddarthpaul]

After a lot of scouting around just to have anything that works to do minimally invasive net content filtering for a reasonable cost, I came up with the Linksys WRT54GS router (review) [pcmag.com] and their Parental Controls service. Not by any means perfect, but most of the time, it does the job and works on ALL the connected computers, you just define different users. It is not ideal for households where everyone shares the same computer. What it's best at is cutting off services at certain times of day. You can configure the filtering and then largely set and forget it, although you need to err on the lax side unless you always want to be overriding the controls. For whatever reason, Linksys doesn't really advertise this service very much, despite being one of the more cost effective options out there. For this reason, I am always thinking that they are going to discontinue the service, but they haven't (and I've had it for a couple of years now). The fact that it is administrated through the router is a big plus, comparable to corporate solutions costing much, much more.

The best there is!

[Lazypete]

The absolute solution to this, easy Put the computer in the living room or somewhere where he can't hide what the kids doing. There's no way the teen can get around that. Thats the most effective and costless solution.

Best idea I can think of.

[visualight]

Clone the desktop to the tv in the living room. There's plenty holes in that strategy I know, but maybe access can be physically disabled when he's alone at home? Like take the modem to work or something.

Anyway a friend did this with his daughter, drove her crazy cause she could only use the internet when he was able to flip the remote to video and see what she was looking at whenever he wanted. Once in a while he would get a black screen (screen saver) and he'd be straight to the stairs to see why.

She did once change clone to second desktop, that fooled him for about a week, but then she got grounded.

Re:logging firewall and TALKING

[s.bots]

In other words if I was being monitored by my parents I'd have simply found a way to make sure they can't see what I'm doing. At worst I'd have told them to f-off and challenged them to do something about it.

And then pappy whips you with the buckle end of the belt. Sister calls you a brat. Mom cries and wishes it was legal to have a 72nd term abortion. Its happened.

Dan Savage to the rescue

[Anonymous Meoward]

This very topic came up on Dan Savage's advice column, "Savage Love" (see the Onion's AV club site for more details). The best suggestion I saw was from a guy who was hiding porn mags under his mattress as a teenager. Mom found out, and simply replaced them with copies of Good Housekeeping. Best non-lecture ever imparted, no?

The same writer extended this approach to Web browsing. Basically, chances are Johnny hasn't been deleting his Web browser's history, so a proactive parent can check it, and then try visiting bogus sites that are similarly spelled. For example, if www.hotbabes.com appears in Johnny's history or cache, you visit www.hotbabe_JohnWeKnowYouAreVisitingThis.com .

The next time Johnny types in the URL with auto-complete turned on, he'll know his folks disapprove, and that his surfing is being monitored.

It would also help if Mom talks with Johnny later, but active parenting techniques are beyond the scope of this post.

Post the logs.

[saintlupus]

I read a suggestion on here a couple of years ago that struck me as sensible at the time; post the web-browsing logs for the whole family, color-coded by member, on the fridge at regular intervals. It's a social solution rather than a technical one, so it might even work.

--saint

Re:Easy. Install Astaro (free) on beige box.

[mOdQuArK!]

Until his friends teach him how to use an encrypted proxy connections.

Simplistic solutions like yours make it easier for savvy teenagers to get the thrill of porn-viewing, rule-breaking and losing respect for adult competence all at once.

Re:covenant eyes

[ZombieWomble]

Or she could take 5 minutes a day to spend with her kids and talk about what they did on the internet and at school, you know : *PARENTING*

"Hey son, looked up much quality porn recently?"

"Yeah mom, you should've seen this shit. That ho was getting banged by seven guys, and that was before the horse showed up! Here, I'll cc you the link!"

Lets face it, while "Parenting" may be a possible solution to this problem, it is in no way the same as asking 2 or 3 questions a day - do you really think a kid would own up in such a situation? And, in reality, is the concept of a young male looking at some boobies really so horrible? There are much more serious things to be concerned about these days.

Re:covenant eyes

[Fulcrum of Evil]

And that would cause the computer to leave the house.

That'll show 'em! Seriously, that level of monitoring displays nothing more than a lack of trust. The education angle that others have brought up is far more effective and doesn't make your kids resent you. It's not like porn is wrong - it's just something that should be done in moderation.