OT parental watch software

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jim
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J

Jim

A friend at work has a 11 year old son she wishes to protect from some
of the web based areas he ought not be interested in yet.  Each member
of the family has their own computer connected via a router.  All are
Windows based, either XP or Vista.  She is interested in installing a
"nanny" piece of software that will both block access to forbidden sites
and provide a log of what sites were visited.  Any suggestions?  
Freeware or commercial, whichever works the best.

Now to make it more interesting.  The son got a new computer to replace
the one he glommed up.  After helping her extract needed files from it
she gave me that box.  A Dell Pentium III around 600 MHz.  I'm
considering setting that up with Dan's Guardian but am not certain fully
of what it's strengths or weaknesses are.

Any suggestions most appreciated.
 
Jim said:
A friend at work has a 11 year old son she wishes to protect from some
of the web based areas he ought not be interested in yet.
Click to expand...

(snip)

The 11-year-old son likely knows a lot more about computers than you and his
parents do, combined. Your task is hopeless, I'm afraid. Any solution, no
matter how good, will be circumvented in less than 5 minutes by the AVERAGE
11-year-old. Even assuming the 11-year-old in question is below average in
intelligence, any software solution you come up with will be effective for
less than 24 hours, MAXIMUM.

I like my wife's solution to this problem. There is exactly one computer in
the house, and it is set up so that the monitor is clearly visible from both
the kitchen and the living room. You can also hear the computer in those
rooms. (One parent is almost always in one of those two rooms.) Even that
solution isn't perfect, if the children are ever home alone.

But trying to find a software solution? You are banging your head against
the wall. Might work for children MUCH younger, but by the time today's
kids reach 11, they are RE-CODING the software themselves!!! I'm not
kidding. I was an IT professional for decades, and sometimes I'm amazed at
what my early teenage god-children can do with computers. They aren't
exactly Einsteins either, I'm afraid. Most of their friends in fact, are
more computer savvy than they are. -Dave
 
Jim said:
A friend at work has a 11 year old son she wishes to protect from some
of the web based areas he ought not be interested in yet. Each member
of the family has their own computer connected via a router. All are
Windows based, either XP or Vista. She is interested in installing a
"nanny" piece of software that will both block access to forbidden sites
and provide a log of what sites were visited. Any suggestions?
Freeware or commercial, whichever works the best.

Now to make it more interesting. The son got a new computer to replace
the one he glommed up. After helping her extract needed files from it
she gave me that box. A Dell Pentium III around 600 MHz. I'm
considering setting that up with Dan's Guardian but am not certain fully
of what it's strengths or weaknesses are.

Any suggestions most appreciated.
Click to expand...

Reusing the 600MHz box for this, makes sense. You might need to add an extra
network card, as the filter box will go between the router and
the 11 year old's computer. At least with a filter box, rebooting
into Linux on the new computer, won't allow him to bypass it.

http://dansguardian.org/?page=introduction

What it won't stop though, is plugging in a
USB WIFI adapter, and simply bypassing the
filtered network connection. Securing the
computer itself (locking away the computer,
and only exposing the monitor, keyboard, and
mouse), prevents a few creative methods. But
I'm sure there are still ways to get around
it. For example, if you leave ports open on
the firewall, a person could open encrypted
connections, and when Dans Guardian sees
an encrypted stream, what would it do ? Opening
a VPN (virtual private network) would be an
example of a potential encrypted stream.

An enterprising kid could make a fortune providing
IT consulting services, for the purpose of
breaking out of schemes like this :-)

Snipping the LAN connection altogether, solves
a lot of problems.

Paul
 
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