Protecting kids from t'internet?

[Tonster]

So my 6 year old just realised he vaguely knows how to spell, that Google knows everything and in one click gives images, and now he's just realised how to put it all together and access it with no adults required.

Arse.

I caught him googling 'Aliens' yesterday on my iPad and he did not take kindly to me ripping it from his hands before he hit submit. A child that has to sleep with the lights on because he's afraid escaped tigers will break into the house and eat him (so yeah having the light on really defends against that) is not about to be let loose to search for... well, anything much frankly.

Given that we have 2 iphones, 1 ipad and a PC, all of which he knows how to operate, it's only a matter of time before he sees something he shouldn't despite the gestapo (me and his mother) saying he can only use them when we're with him. Because that always works, right?

So, short of switching off the router (not an option) anyone here got a good way of letting the young uns loose on the Internet without any risk of seeing something they shouldn't?

[LSM]

Make him an account on here and tell him this is the entire internet. The novelty will soon wear off.

Or, parental access controls or some shit*




*lol, yeah right.

[Cannon_Fodda]

opendns.com, set up an account, set your home router's DNS to that, and add filtering to your hearts content. You can bypass it on specific computers if you want/need to, but basically anything on your network will be locked down to whatever you like.

[DrKazza]

I tried opendns... doesn't work with Sky routers... i even got the admin password and everything.
I think BT routers should be ok.

[Kiwi]

It's hard to protect kids but one of the best ways is to be open and talk to them about being safe on the Internet and that some things are not nice to look at for children.

I had a situation where Daughter was looking at sex videos on YouTube. Only way I found out was due to the suggested videos it pops up all of a sudden started being things that I don't look at. I had Google safe search active but hadn't set YouTube up. Hardest part for me was the fact she had lied initially about what she was looking at on the Internet (had said she was watching minecraft videos in the morning)

We have the pc in the front room so I can monitor her Internet use and to hopefully stop her from hormone fuelled boys as she gets older.

Frank discussions and honesty is the way to go and we now have a rule where the pc is off limits unless I'm in the room and I explained why.

Knowing the sort of stuff that's out there you have to do your best to protect your kids.

[Cacker]

OpenDNS is probably the best bet as it doesn't rely on client side software.

You *can* bypass annoying sky routers, but it's a pain, because it uses MER authentication, and it's a bit of a rigmarole trying to get another router to work.

Once it does work however, you can set the DNS servers to OpenDNS ones.

Alternatively, if you can't set DNS servers on the router, can you set the iPad to manual IP config and set a static IP and DNS there ? It's easy enough on a PC, again set a static IP and DNS settings.

I believe you can set up a client on the PC and control exactly what filtering is done from a free openDNS account. So you can still download filthy porn to your own pc/laptop.

[larchy]

Do you remember when we all used to post about which scripts had the best gren2 timer? When it gets to the point when we're all watching countdown in our underpants and posting about the best way to realise we smell of wee someone needs to epically resurrect this.


I've made it quite clear to my daughter, no boys until she's at least 30. She's only 1 but seemed to take it onboard. For the purposes of this, Iggle Piggle is a girl.


It's always going to be a balancing act though. You can go down the route of whitelisting if you want to be really restrictive. There's any number of software packages out there that will do a reasonable (but not 100%) job of content filtering, and none of them are any use whatsoever against a determined child with access to Google. Things like openDNS and Metacert can block undesirable content, but their focus is more on bums and boobs rather than dinosaurs and aliens, so it depend show restrictive you need to be.

A combination of settings to block the worst stuff and, as Kiwi very correctly says, education is best.

Or just blindfold him? Forever? Will be fine I'm sure.

[Tonster]

Coincidentally Sky have just emailed me about Sky Shield, their vague attempt at something along these lines. I've switched it on but it does nothing to stop the norteh pictures, but at least it's something. Yup I'm setting up Google safe search and anything else like that I can think of. OpenDNS seems like something that I could quickly turn into a clusterfuck especially as I do have a Sky router, think I'll pass on that one.

Education is certainly the number one line of defence. Give me a few more days I'll have him 100% convinced that Google really is how escaped tigers find you and hunt you down.

[Refugee]

sky shield aka don't think about how it works because if you think about how it works we're basically routing all your traffic through a third party company but don't worry about that why would you worry about that stop worrying about it

[LSM]

It's futile as no matter how good a parent you are there's going to be some numpty-spawn in the playground with unlimited access to all the goat-roping joys a young mind can handle.

Might as well take him down a strip club and be done with it. At least he'll come away with a better developed etiquette.

[Refugee]

Dehumanise yourself and face to bloodshed

[Refugee]

Serious post though with my serious hat on for a second

I do software dev.

There is one rule that I keep telling people when we're building new systems for them:

You can't use software to solve social issues. Because people either break it, ignore it, or find a way around it.

[Tonster]

people either break it, ignore it, or find a way around it.

I'm talking about a 6 year old who still thinks the world is a fluffy place, I just want to keep it that way a while longer.

[Refugee]

I'm just saying you can't really rely on that stuff at all because all it does is present a challenge to them which they'll eventually get around but you won't know which might be worse?

I'm not trying to tell you what to do I'm just saying if you get software just assume it didn't work

[Kiwi]

As we were the first generation of the Internet it's even more worrying for us to protect our own kids because we were the ones who invented/searched out the very stuff we don't want them to see.

[Refugee]

Fold a copy of the sun up so only the bar code is showing so the newsagent doesn't notice then you can look at the tits

[Kiwi]

The Internet has ruined the chance of kids finding porn in bushes. We found a strap-on in the bushes once. Crazy Kiwis.

[Xion]

Do you remember when we all used to post about which scripts had the best gren2 timer?

Speak Four.Three.Two.One.Zero

[LSM]

Perhaps us old'uns should start to go around after dark planting saucy care packages so this generation can discover the joys of bush...in the bush.

We might sort out the problem of kids never leaving the house, childhood obesity and wall-to-wall trash on the TV in one fell swoop. We'd be hailed fucking heroes.

[Refugee]

https://twitter.com/search?q=found%20dildo&src=typd