Parents: Can you recommend a good web filtering program for kids (Net Nanny, etc.)?

yes. It’s called parenting.
you need to monitor what you daughter is doing better.
Don’t let her have her own laptop or computer.
Its actually illegal for your 9 year old to be signed up to sites on the web (13 or older only!)
Make sure she is using a computer where you can see her.
That’s the best web filtering in the world.

I really hate it when people get all judgemental without stopping to think that you might not know the whole story. You don’t. I asked a simple question, thank you for not only not answering it, but succeeding in getting me all irritated.

Hey I’m sorry.
I’m saying that’s my personal opinion.
I do think parents should watch what their kids do, and clearly you’re saying she has a computer that is not in your sight. I’m saying, you should try making sure that’s there first.

sister* sorry

It’s my sister, first of all. I don’t live in this house. My mother is one of the least technically-savvy people in existence and did not even realize until I pointed it out that it was not a good idea to have my sister hooked up to the internet without some sort of safety net.

She is usually monitored, but it’s pretty obvious to most people how easy it is to accidentally find porn sites or whatever (even an innocent Google search can yield unwanted X-rated results). My mom just doesn’t know or think of these things.

I want to get a program that will allow her to use the internet without my having to be completely paranoid she’ll click on an ad by accident and see something she shouldn’t.

OpenDNS is brilliant; if you need help, post here and I’ll be happy to assist. It’s pretty straightforward though, and totally free.

Thanks, richard.. I’ll have to look into that. It looks like Net Nanny is the best of all the software on the market, according to multiple reviews. The OpenDNS thing might be too complicated for my mom to manage while I’m not around.

I guess I’d say try and teach your mum then :) everyone could do with a bit of help from the internet these days.

I dunno.

And tbh, I don’t think I’ve ever found an ad on a site that doesn’t sound pornographic without it being pornographic (i.e. I have never clicked on something then gone “THIS IS PORN? WTF I wasn’t expecting that”) and ads like that – in my experience – are not usually on sites a common nine year old might be on in the first place.
It’s easy to set up preferences in google… just click on preferences and select “filter my searches”

When I say she’s not technically savvy, I mean that whatever I do has to be super simple. It’s incredible, she even has problems using browsers and stuff.

I apologize for getting snappy.

My mums the same. But it’s sticking with it.
Sadly you have to be patient and go over it again and again.
I still stick with parenting is the best option.
How does your mum and Dad feel about this?
I think if you inform them, they will have the drive to do something (or to learn how to do something) about it themselves if they think it’s damaging to you sister.

It’s more like a safety net. A seat belt, a bicycle helmet, that sort of thing. Why would you not wear them, even if you’re being super careful?

When I was 11 I used to get up at like 2am to use the Internet. I think the best option is both; both of you guys are right. There’s nothing wrong with using both a web filter and guiding your kids through the Internet.

@Richard, is it easy to set-up? This thread made me realize it is time to install this on my pc. Do I set the parameters or does the system do it for me?

Head over to:
http://www.opendns.com/homenetwork/solutions

Click on “start using OpenDNS”.

Follow the instructions to setup OpenDNS on your computer (you can choose which OS you have etc etc).

Once that’s setup, follow the instructions on the website to create an OpenDNS account and you can configure what type of content is and isn’t available, and create a custom black and white list of websites.

Let me know if you get stuck.

Your sister accidentally clicking on a porn site is not the end of the world. Being a girl, (or at least a 9-year-old girl) she’ll hopefully just get disgusted and try to close the page. The problem is when she’ll be chatting happily on mIRC or ICQ or whatever it is kids chat on these days (yes, I’m an early 90s chatter) and eventually start hanging out with a 60-year-old paedophile who tells her his name is Jessica from LA and she just started high school.

So unfortunately these programmes don’t work, at least not for girls.

Another worry would be that she clicks on all sorts of useless things like popups and downloads a virus or something. This is a common problem with people who first go on the internet. I remember my sister once calling me to fix her PC. “what did you do?” I asked. “Well, there was this window and it said to click here, so I clicked”.

There are several but, try Kidzui, it’s a kids browser that sends you reports of what she’s been up to. I have AT&T and I set up a sub-acct for my son and just turn on the parental controls. Works great for me.

>Your sister accidentally clicking on a porn site is not the end of the world. Being a girl, (or at least a 9-year-old girl) she’ll hopefully just get disgusted and try to close the page.

Maybe not quite so simple as that. I think that’s the view of a worldly-wise person who’s forgotten what it’s like to be an innocent. A child who has been properly parented and protected and not exposed to things for which she’s too immature could be horribly, horribly shocked.

At age eight my appropriately naive son and his friend found a page of a pornographic newspaper blowing down the street. It contained an image of a woman in a pose that shocked and frightened him so much that it was months before he could even talk about it, during which time it was obvious that he was troubled but I coudn’t find out why. Seeing a woman depicted that way was deeply disturbing to him, and there was nothing that could be done to erase the image. The best that I could think to do was to say that when you love someone, the sight of the person’s body is beautiful to you, but that anything can be made to look ugly, especially to someone who doesn’t understand it. I never knew if it helped at all. I do believe the experience left a mark that affected him for a long time.

I commend AlenaD for her concern and hope she finds the answer. When NetNanny was installed at my house, the children outsmarted it in minutes.

I guess it’s one of these culture things. Here in Europe images of nudity (even in these poses) are not as shocking as what you’d see on an average news bulletin (dismembered bodies, drowned people etc). It is characteristic that whereas in America movies are usually X-rated for sex, here in Europe they are X-rated for violence. I first saw magazines like that when I was 5 or so and didn’t even get the point of them. Then again, I also saw a man get killed around the same age.

i don’t know of any, but to anyone that says filtering isn’t necessary if you’re parenting well enough, i think it’s pretty ridiculous to assume that any parent can monitor their kid that closely 24/7. also, it’s really easy to stumble into dirty websites, especially if you’re really young and don’t realize that what you’re typing could also mean something else to adults…

A secondary point to my story was that the Internet is not the only source of such exposure, and sometimes there is nothing parents can do.

I know that a lot of routers have built in parental controls, which can be used to filter via keywords or by domains, and will even send parents emails when restricted content is attempted to be accessed. Get started by going to your router setup page. (eg http://192.168.1.1)

RichardHenry: Yay (and lurve) for mentioning OpenDNS!
(I’m friends with the founder.)

@Nimis: O rly? That’s awesome! OpenDNS is so great.

Yes, the best program is. KEEP THEM OFF THE INTERNET!
I tutor people on how to use their computer and navigate the internet.
This is how I see. No internet till they can buy their own computer. And, if you are over the age of 65 and just learning. Buy a frisbee, get out of the house while you still can. Yes, I know… I know. If they cant get out, the internet does keep them stimulated.
If schools only had an INTRANET there would not be any need for web filtering.

I don’t believe in censoring or anything like that