Parental Control Software recommendations?

[Larry Browning]

My grand kids are getting to the age where a good parental control program is becoming necessary. They are all good kids and I do not think they would visit an inappropriate site on purpose, but I want to protect them from accidentally going to something bad.
I have been doing some research and so far it seems that everyone I find seems to have mixed reviews. Such as AVG Family Safety. PC Magazine went on and on about how great it was, but the user reviews called it useless.
My needs are pretty simple, I just need something that will block unwanted web sites. Their parents probably need something a little more robust, such as monitoring and facebook tools and the like.
Any suggestions?

[Dennis Peacock]

OpenDNS AND put in a iBoss Router with subscription. I've been through MANY software attempts at parental control over the past several years. The iBoss is awesome and it doesn't require a software install to control what enters your computer network at home. Subscription is $60 a year and very well worth it..!!!

[paul cottingham]

open dns rocks, and is hard to circumvent.

[Larry Browning]

As it turns out my ISP provides some parental control software. We use cox and they seem to have some software called McAfee Family Protection. Does anyone have any experience with this?
OpenDNS does look interesting, I wonder if it can be used with the McAfee product.

[Dennis Peacock]

Larry,
Use OpenDNS. There are MANY out there that use OpenDNS. For your true control at a hardware level, put in the iBoss router with paid subscription. You will not be sorry you did. I LOVE my hardware solution. It's blocked and filtered BEFORE it makes it into your wired and wireless network. It's safe for even iPhone & iPod Touch people in your home. Another thing to note is that the interface is crazy simple to use. I've spent a LOT of money on software and setups over several years and this is by far the best solution I've ever put in place.

[paul cottingham]

opendns is really hard to work around. It is also more granular than other options.
You are also much more in control of what sites are blocked. For example, I know at one time net nanny blocked access to the dnc website, but not the republican one.

[Charles Wiggins]

http://www.internetsafety.com/safe-e...l-software.php

[Larry Browning]

Dennis,
Do you have the paid version of OpenDNS? It looks to me like the free version would work fine. Not sure what the paid version gets you. I thing my needs are pretty basic. We have 3 grandkids that visit occasionally. The oldest is 8, so I don't think I need something that is hack proof just yet. One is coming this summer for about a week, so I was thinking that he might want to get on the internet. He loves the video games and I have already learned the lesson about those game sites and the havoc they can cause. I won't allow him to go to those anymore!

At this point I am probably going to pass on the iBoss. It looks to be a bit of overkill for now.
The solution offered by cox seems promising, but I sure would like some input for someone who has used it. I wonder if it would play well with OpenDNS.

[Myk Rian]

Our local computer group used to do weekly classes for 6 years. We had many thousand take the class. The subject most all parents asked about was parental control.
Here's what we came up with after studying this, in depth, and with input from the Michigan State Police computer crimes unit.

Kids know how to use computers better than you do. They pass info to each other in school, at home, everywhere.
They know how to circumvent ANY parental controls you may take a fancy to. They can get around it. Guaranteed.
Don't kid yourself into thinking you're smarter than a 5th grader. You'll lose the contest.

The absolute best you can do is NOT put a computer in their bedrooms.
Put the computer in a family area where you can watch what's going on.

Use a Pop-up-blocker. That makes your own browsing better.

[Jim Becker]

Like Dennis, we use OpenDNS to provide whole house filtration. While we used K9 from BlueCoat (free) for a long time, managing and maintaining the software on our kids individual computers got to be a pain--not due to the software, but due to the inconvenience to be sure that updates got applied, etc, since that requires administrator access. We also are not extreme in our filtering, but do monitor everything. We have access to our girls Facebook accounts, see every email in and out and generally keep track of what goes on behind the scenes, while expecting them to be responsible. I'd rather spot-check than "nanny" them. Additionally, using the OpenDNS system means it covers all devices. Kids these days don't spend much time on traditional computers...it's all about portable devices like iPod Touch. For your purposes, OpenDNS is simple. It's also free.

Of course, there are downsides for the adults in the house...I had to white list the PowerBall site to check if I won. LOL

[phil harold]

Our local computer group used to do weekly classes for 6 years. We had many thousand take the class. The subject most all parents asked about was parental control.
Here's what we came up with after studying this, in depth, and with input from the Michigan State Police computer crimes unit.

Kids know how to use computers better than you do. They pass info to each other in school, at home, everywhere.
They know how to circumvent ANY parental controls you may take a fancy to. They can get around it. Guaranteed.
Don't kid yourself into thinking you're smarter than a 5th grader. You'll lose the contest.

The absolute best you can do is NOT put a computer in their bedrooms.
Put the computer in a family area where you can watch what's going on.

Use a Pop-up-blocker. That makes your own browsing better.

Locks only keep honest people honest!

If the kid wants to get around they will

we keep our computer in the library, I can see the screen from the couch in the living room
Teaching a kids about choices, and trusting them goes alot farther than building walls

[Greg Portland]

It would be simple to connect to the neighbor's unblocked wireless router to circumvent all of these solutions. IMO, keep the computer in a common area or don't connect the bedroom computer to a network (no network card or locked out in BIOS).

[Larry Browning]

I totally agree with the the statement "Teaching a kids about choices, and trusting them goes alot farther than building walls" Creating an environment that sends the message "I don't trust you to do the right thing" only encourages them to try to prove you are right for not trusting them. What I am trying to avoid is them going to some site they thought was something that it wasn't or accidentally clicking on something that takes them somewhere they shouldn't go. If it is discovered they are intentionally trying to get around the controls, that is the time their internet privileges get taken away and parental controls then become a moot point.

[Myk Rian]

I use AVG FREE anti-virus. Has a built in link scanner for malicious sites, and a family protection module to warn of inappropriate content. The protection module is $20/year, for 3 computers. Base software is free. It will protect from what your concerns are, but still, it can be gotten around.
www.free.avg.com

[Andrew Pitonyak]

Kids know how to use computers better than you do. They pass info to each other in school, at home, everywhere.
They know how to circumvent ANY parental controls you may take a fancy to. They can get around it. Guaranteed.
Don't kid yourself into thinking you're smarter than a 5th grader. You'll lose the contest.

More accurately, they likely are able to get around anything that is installed on their computer. hard controls on another device is more problematic. Unfortunately, this moves the filtering off the local machine to some other machine, which may be a device or computer that you presonally control, or even your provider.

Sadly, I will need to concern myself with this soon enough (I have a 6 year old)

Regardless of the method used, oversight of some sort is the usual solution such as computer in the large public room with everyone else so that activity can be seen and for any social sites, the parents have access to the site (friends or what not).