Parents -- do you feel you are doing something worthwhile when using "net nanny" software?

I used to use a software for my kids that was designed for Macs. It worked well, and was easy to customize. I got it after my son stumbled upon a porn site when he misspelled a search term. He didn’t crack it until he was about ten years old.

I’ve never used it.

I believe it is far better to teach our kids how to police themselves rather than trying to let software do it.

I agree with you @wundayatta. Once your children reach a certain age they will find what you don’t want them to find, especially if you make a big deal out of it. Young children should only use a computer with supervision. Give them more freedom when they are older, but communicate with them and be aware of the sites they visit. Parental supervision is more helpful than anything else. ;)

The first thing that happened was that my husband and I both received an e-mail at work from our older son at home that simply said ”Net Nanny???” He was shocked that we would be so crude.

It took him no time at all to download and install a keystroke capture program so he could capture the password to that—and everything else. The next day he went in and turned it off. (This was before we all had our own separate computers.)

Our younger son was more direct. He simply went to the hard drive and deleted the program files.

Trying to control anything they did with locks, fences, and other material barriers has never done any good whatsoever. Teaching them the principles we wanted them to internalize has really been the only way, and that with but moderate success.

I’ve always believed that there was really nothing we could keep from them anyway, though of course we did attempt it. Much better for them to understand their choices and learn to make them responsibly than for us to try to manage everything they did and make unenforceable rules that only earned their scorn.

Trying to beat kids’ know-how and resourcefulness on a computer, especially for parents who didn’t grow up with it, is sort of like trying to cheat a professional card player at a poker game. Not only are you going to lose but you’re going to look like an idiot for thinking you could beat him at his own game.

It never occurred to me to use this sort of software and I would doubt if it works anyway. I just sort of let my children take their chances with the Internet and trusted to their judgment. Trying to prevent them seeing something would just make it seem more alluring.

I never used them and never will. And it’s not about trying to teach others how to police themselves it’s because we have in ourselves, in the human nature, the curiosity. I can stop this at home and they can just spend a few bucks in an internet cafe or somewhere else and just see what’s up with that.
Better let them free and explain freedom comes with responsibilities than to just not allow them to enter and create problems for later. Internet has good and bad aspects at the same time but I do remember what a lot of people said… ” The internet is for porn!!”.

It’s not particularly effective, as we have seen above, against anyone determined to defeat it. The problem is that setting up a filter is exactly the kind of action that will give a teen said determination.

Red rags and bulls.

Wow! I had no idea how many different ways there are to defeat a net nanny. My method seems pretty difficult compared to some of the other (looking for search terms that outwit the net nanny). But getting a keystroke program to hack the password, or simply deleting the software, or going to another computer in an internet cafe (or library or friends house or wherever) seem much simpler than what I thought of. Get a few kids together, and I bet you’d get ten more solutions in a few minutes.

I’ve generally believed that the only effective control is self control, but now this seems even clearer than before.

Never heard of this kind of thing but my kids are still young. Having a computer genius for a father, though, who plans to teach them what he knows will end up in my kids knowing how to get around that thing like yesterday. So we will probably have something more sophisticated in place, that Alex will code himself and route to the entire network.