Although this is not something I would use myself, I have frequently been asked about parental control software. There seems to be a distinction here however that needs to be made between controlling and monitoring what your child does on the internet. Some parents may want to watch there child’s activity on the internet and intervene when necessary whilst others may want to prevent their children ever going on certain sites. Here I will be covering a few applications that can help with both.
Vista parental controls
If you are using vista then it is possible to set up parental controls on your child’s account. That’s assuming you have set up a separate account for your child…..you have haven’t you? If you haven’t already then it is a good idea to do so as it will limit what your child can view, install and run. As you need to be an administrator to install programs in vista, if your child attempts to install a program they will be prompted with the admin password.
It might also be a good idea to use a limited user account yourself as it can limit the amount of damage malware can do to your computer should it get installed. Microsoft has a good article on user accounts in vista. Once you have each individual child’s accounts set up then go to –> control panel –> user accounts and family safety –> parental controls to select which websites to allow (whitelist) or disallow (blacklist) and which programs to allow or disallow. As parental control website filtering applies to internet explorer it might be an idea to only allow internet explorer and not alternate browsers such as Firefox.
K9 Web Protection
If vista’s parental controls don’t quite do it for you then you could try installing k9 web protection from Bluecoat. K9 works with any browser and blocks websites you don’t want your children to see in 50 different categories from pron to drugs to hate speech etc. When k9 protected browsers visit a website k9 firstly checks it’s own database of blocked sites. If it is not on this list it analyses the content case by case to make a decision. Browser activity can also be seen here even if the child has cleaned their browsing history, making it a nifty child monitor.
It’s a free solution as like the great free firewall company comodo it offers it’s business to large companies and spreads the word of the software by offering free versions to individuals. k9 is very difficult to remove without having the password so more computer savvy kids can’t disable it easily. K9 requires a licence for installation which you can get for free via email. Users generally give k9 very good reviews and for zero cash it’s a great option.
Imaware
Imaware doesn’t fall into the monitoring or filtering category but it is a useful tool for a parent to have. Imaware scans computers for instant messaging programs, 27 of them at the moment and lets you know if they are installed on your computer. It may not necessarily be MSN or AOL that your kids are using to chat with so this could be handy if you have less of an idea about chat programs than your kids. One glaring omission from the 27 it does detect is Digsby which is my current Instant Messaging favourite which can sign you into a number of other networks including MSN, Yahoo, AOL and Facebook. A basic tool but handy to some perhaps.
OpenDns
OpenDNS is a web service that resolves DNS queries for you. In English this means that when you click on a link you send a request to a Domain Name Service that will find the website for you. From Wikipedia:
The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource participating in the Internet. It associates various information with domain names assigned to such participants. Most importantly, it translates domain names meaningful to humans into the numerical (binary) identifiers associated with networking equipment for the purpose of locating and addressing these devices world-wide. An often used analogy to explain the Domain Name System is that it serves as the “phone book” for the Internet by translating human-friendly computer hostnames into IP addresses. For example, www.example.com translates to 208.77.188.166.
Your ISP does this for you automatically, however you could use OpenDns for this service as it you can set up web filtering with OpenDns whereas it is unlikely your ISP supports this. OpenDns has 50 categories of web filtering to choose from and is managed when you sign into their service. Other benefits include lookup speed increases, phishing protection and typo auto-correction in an url. I have used OpenDns in the past and can highly recommend it. It is relatively straightforward to setup and the how to geek has a great screenshot guide to doing so.
Other Options
If you use the Firefox browser then there are a few addons that may be of use but beware as these can be disabled easily or another browser could be used. Another option could be to use the filtering provided within your router if your router supports it.
Picture by B Tal.
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