Okay so my step brother is 9 years old and his mum would like me to find somthing so that he cant look at "dirty" or any other violent sites on his computer. (She asked me since im the most technical person in the household). Seeing as im older i obviously dont have a filter and was wondering if you guys have any ideas, somthing i could install onto his comp would be good and free is nice too Thanks for the help (wasnt sure where to post this)
The fickle part of me says install Linux without the appropriate drivers, and by the time he has connected to the internet he will be a vastly older and wiser man.
ROFL! ... but seriously. Tell his mum that nothing works so well as parental supervision. Just take an interest in what he gets up to.
I'm with Nexxo. Best protection: PC in living room. Put it anywhere else and he'll have whatever you decide on disabled just as soon as you leave the room. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4351, though, possibly.
You could also try setting the router to point to OpenDNS for your DNS servers, and then set up filtering through them. I only use them for DNS servers and not for filtering (I don't need to block pron from myself, thank you very much) but I expect it would work quite well. They've got that gmail spam filter thing going on where they have so much data that it can be really accurate. But Nexxo is right.
just let him look at the porn and gore? it gets boring pretty fast. I'm sure most of the people on this forum have seen gotse etc. and yet don't find any attraction to the matirial once the initial curiosity has abated. If somone didn't want me to see something I would spend more time and effort trying to see it. As for computers get him a linux boxen that way he will learn more and not waste all his time gaming (unless he gets addicted to nethack).
Hes 9 years old his mum just wants to protect him is all. I can see why too ive seen some pretty bad things on the internet. For example, 2girls1cup scared me for life
Vista (probably XP too) has some pretty decent parental controls. Try sticking them on medium and activate the reporting and then tell the kid that his mum can see what he's been looking at. Or even just leave them as they are and tell him that bad things on the internet make kittens die horrible gruesome deaths.
you could try this : clicky what my mum uses for my brother (10 years old) and it's a great system as it monitors all internet usage, not a particular program. easy to set up and use, give it a go? c.u.later
Yes, but his mum needs to consider the perspective of a nine-year old. They are really not that interested in sex at that age (except perhaps as a freakshow: "eeeuuw!"). That does not come until they are about 12. At the end of the day, the best net nanny does not block everything, and there are many more serious threats on the net than the odd picture of naked people doing unnatural things. This is no different than him going outside to play with his peers without adult supervision. She has to teach him to use common sense and avoid what looks like trouble, and to come to her if in doubt. His mum should just take an interest in what he is doing, and have the sort of relationship with him in which he wants to tell her.
Parental supervision is the best way to do it as Nexxo stated, it'll also help to ensure that they don't grow apart, as long as the parent(s) know what their child(ren) is doing on the internet they will be able to ensure awkward questions don't come up. Also, I don't know if this has any scientific proof, but I strongly believe that leaving a child alone with an emotionless entity like the internet (with cruel people on forums) during their formative years will damage their upbringing.
Clearly, look at Mankz. '91 But in all seriousness, supervision is best but at that age kids are neither looking for nor interested in any of that kind of stuff. I don't think the internet can do a whole lot of damage to someone (in any sense) until probably 13 or so, when they might be dumb enough to post personal information on myspace in order to get involved with some questionable shenanigans.
lol at this thread going offtopic. The guy just wanted some hints on how to make him mom feel that the little kid is surfing tha intarrwebZ in safe-mode. Ofcourse parental control is the best, but that's not what he asked for. Best thing is to ude the addon and that linky that c.u.later gave a few posts ago, and be sure to tell your mom that they might get the worst out of the way, but wont work 100%.
Oh look ive started quite the debate here how unexpected. Anyway hes a good kid im sure he wouldnt do anything anyway, he plays runescape and speaks on msn thats really it, then he just plays his wii. His mum is just being protective, if i had kids i wouldnt want them seeing all the things i have now, its quite scary. Thanks for all your responses they have been really intresting to read. I love this community ^^ (i came from gamespot)
