blocking things on the internet
 

I have a 13 year old son who has been known to go to areas of the internet where he should not be (nothing pornographic, just websites that I don't approve of).

His friend's mother said that her husband installed a program called 'Canine' on their computer yesterday to keep her son from going to unauthorized sites. I can't find any more info on that.

So my question for all of you is: have you ever had experience with using a software to keep parental controls on your computer? If so, what have you used and what have you liked or not liked about it?

Thanks for your help.

K9 Web Protection

I recommend X3church, or a similar program. The person using the computer is aware the program is in place, which is part of the deterrent. The cookies and temp files are emailed every so often to a parent or pastor or both. The files cannot be undone, and the password can be set so that kids cannot turn the program off. That's for accountability. Unless you have some sort of program that tracks computer usage, you really don't know whether or not inappropriate content has been accessed.

Secondly, we have the computer that the kids use in the kitchen/dining room with the monitor facing the table, so there is no way they could get away with looking at something without being caught, at least, pretty quickly.

Our kids are never allowed to have our laptops in their bedrooms. Period.

If you use profiles in Windows XP or Vista, you can set up a separate profile for you son, and you can block specific websites, or for more stringent filtering, you can choose to only allow certain websites. The latter works very well, but its much more restrictive.

We also don't allow our kids to search Google images and videos. If they need to search for homework, we get the search terms and look them up first, to make sure nothing inappropriate comes up in the search.

we use the filter from American Family.
www.afafilter.com
I pay for it once a year.

www.bsafehome.com

$49.95

The free blocks that I have tried have been a pain. My son would constantly have me unlock something that wasn't anything bad. I wish I had something didn't block an entire site just the bad stuff.

Wow! thanks, everyone, for your quick replies.

Our boys are not allowed to have computers in their bedrooms. At this point in time, we have ONE family computer set up in a room where everyone can see what they are doing. I thought that would be enough. But you know, as they get older, they get wiser. and so if there's a couple of boys circled around the computer, Mom can't see thru the backs to see what's going on........... Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I believe THAT is going to stop too!

The other thing that those of you with younger children will want to be aware of is that you may have the strictest controls possible on them at home. But when they go to their friend's house and their friend has a computer in their room that no one is monitoring, it is very easy for them to get on at that point and do whatever they choose. That's how Keith got a MySpace account that I didn't know about until this morning :(

I'm going to check out these filtering programs you all have shared with me. Thanks again.

This is what I use... it is the current rendition of the filter formerly known as AFAfilter.net :killinme:killinme

I don't have to pay anything for filtering out inappropriate programs on my television.

We have American Family's "B-Safe Online" filters on all of our computers and all of ours at church too. It is very strict, when you have it on the fullest capacity. It blocks You Tube, My Space, Etc. unless you go in and ask for those to be permanently unblocked. My son is nineteen, so I unblocked some of those sites for him. I know the password, so if I want to view something on You Tube, I just put the password in and disable it. After watching it, I enable it again. Very easy to do.