What Filters Are Right For Kids? 678
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?"
Re:The simple one. (Score:3, Interesting)
She's a girl (Score:2, Interesting)
Her interest in sex is pretty much limited to looking at cute guys in her class and in teen magazines.
Girls aren't as affected by the visual stimulation from porn ads. At least not to the extent that boys are.
She's not going to be any better off because you start filtering her internet. It's like wrestling a pig. It's dirty and tiresome and just pisses the pig off.
adblock + living room (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
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.
Re:The simple one. (Score:3, Interesting)
I have to ask...do people REALLY that often, hit porn sites by accident?
Here's an anecdote for ya: I've been using the WWW since I got a university account in 1993. As it happens, the first time I accidentally loaded a NSFW page, ever, was... today. (I was googling "LaTeX font color", of all things...)
So, anecdotally, I'd have to say: no, not really. YMMV.
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.
Re:The simple one. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:The simple one. (Score:1, Interesting)
My 7 year old was trying to get to WebKinz, and somehow ended up on a porn site. We were about 10 feet away at the time, but it was pretty terrible to hear a small child ask why those girls were eating winkies
Re:The simple one. (Score:2, Interesting)
It sounds counter intuitive, and I'm sure the opposite goes for children who may not be able to handle it (you know better than I do) but some level of privacy is needed for children to get some level of mental independence from their parents, as well as to ensure they don't grow up a sheltered child.
Plus, I'm sure you don't want walk in on your daughter trying to figure out what
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Use OpenDNS and a hosts file (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes.
Now, in detail:
At 4-8, I don't want them seeing porn, ever.
At 8-12, I don't want them seeing porn, though I expect that one of their friends may show them some. I recall being baffled by what little porn I glimpsed at those ages.
At 12-16ish, I still don't think they can handle porn well, but should have had The Talk by then so at least it's less bizarre.
At 16, I expect my kids will be savvy enough computer users to Find A Way to get porn. However, they'll also know that I will find out afterwards, and it might be confiscated (or their priveleges revoked temporarily) as punishment. We will definitely have the talk that Porn is Out There, and may consider reducing some of the restrictions.
At 18, I'd rather not know about it. Ew. They're old enough to pay for a separate network connection, if they want to look for porn; we can talk as a family about whether to lower the restrictions.
I'm surprised that this hasn't been mentioned. (Score:2, Interesting)
SquidGuard [squidguard.org]
It's what I use at home for my kids. No, it's not perfect, but along with some good URL re-write rules, you can't get to any porn unless you REALLY try.
Re:Google moderate safe search (Score:2, Interesting)
>I have a donkey and a midget waiting for me on the bondage rack.
Which one is your girlfriend?
Re:Google moderate safe search (Score:1, Interesting)
When she gets older, she needs to know the difference between erotica and porn. More and more people have to start letting kids know that porn IS unrealistic. That those "girlfriends" and cars and bling in music videos are fake and that most of those posing and preening musicians will be glad to have ANY kind of work in music three years from now. That you don't solve problems by chasing people and firing guns or jumping from building to building. That a lot of women help each other out instead of playing catty competitive games with each others' heads.... in other words, media literacy. (I'm a somewhat well known writer of comic books and film scripts who gets a little ashamed of what some of my colleagues serve up. I'm proof, however, that one can make a living without dishing out that kind of crap or being boring and self-righteous. Dear consumers, please demand better. We writers CAN deliver, when encouraged.)