Keeping your kids from offensive material on the web

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Purplesunshine I don’t like where you are heading to. Please don’t tell people how to get around these programs. First off kids can NOT watch porn legally! You have to be 18 or older. The library can’t just let anyone watch porn. Also it would end up “disturbing the peace.” So even if you are 18; I doubt you’ll be watching porn. Another note; Windows is an operating system; it is the programs that Windows runs that are primarily easy to get around. Basically if your that computer savvy to run another operating system then your way past any parent or other authority figure. I run Kx (Knoppix) from time to time; basically it is your “own computer.” If I actually want to run programs though; I can’t use Kx. All in all if you just use Kx or any other OS just for porn; you seriously need help.
 
I’m not “telling kids” anything they wouldn’t already know. I’m pointing out how very flawed your plan is.

And YES kids can legally view whatever they want. There have been court cases about it. You have to be over 18 to buy or sell. But free stuff can be for the taking. And as long as they aren’t disturbing anyone, which, the guidelines for are very ambiguious.

I don’t need help, I think porn is awful stuff. I was just pointing out your stary-eyed view of the world is VERY flawed. You’re a 15 year old who believes that they can save the world. Reality will hit in sooner or later.

No computer program in the world will stop an ambitous teen from getting exactly what they want. And parents need to know that…and that its not only possible its EASY.
 
purplesunshine:
I am not going to argue with you. But viewing porn under the age of 18 is illegal; but not enforced. This forum is used to give ideas and help tips, not to criticize. Please don’t come onto this thread dissing me saying I’m trying to save the world, or doubting how wise I am by judging on age. I never said this was full proof, it was an idea to help parents. Yes, any person that REALLY wants something will mostly likely receive it.
God Bless
Ed
 
my point is that a parent who thinks they are “saving” their children by enacting these steps is only fooling themselves
 
Only if there children know how to get around them. As you can see from other posts, parents with much younger children have been using it also.
 
I looked up the law and there is no one law that makes it illegal for children under 18 to view porn. There is a unenforced blanket law about viewing for the US that no one enforces and isn’t monitored. By the age of 13 most librarys adhere to the policy that a child has a right to unmonitered unrestricted computer time. A librarian cannot LEGALLY tell them to turn off porn if they happen to see it. Just as they couldn’t stop them from illegallly gambling or buying illegal drugs.

I’m not trying to be difficult, I’m just proving the point to parents that moral formation is the ONLY way to go becuase no one is going to stop their children.

and I mentioned at the beginning of my post that preventative measures are only good for children under 12 so you don’t need to remind me of that.
 
Ed - many of us are on your side and applaud any efforts / opinions by anyone to help protect our kids of exposure to the junk that the media pushes in their face, with TV & Internet being the largest of those (in my opinion)… 👍

While it is true, if a kid wants to get at something they shouldn’t (drugs, alcohol, guns or inappropriate web junk) they will try to find a way to do that. Doesn’t mean we as parents should stand by and not try to prevent it. To do nothing as a parent is irresponsible, reckless, neglect and abuse.
 
purplesunshine said:
While your ideas may be good for someone with toddlers or young children who’s schools moniter their computer time I don’t forsee this working for anyone over 12.
  1. Friends. Sorry, but with iphones, ebooks, blackberries all in the hands of pre-teens there’s not much you can control, even if you’re in a sheltered group, like homeschoolers…beucase someone will always know someone. Furtermore, many school districts are implementing one laptop per child programs. Within the next 15 years most kids will have their own pc or pc-type device. And don’t say OH NO! beucase in the 60’s they laughed when people said kids would have handheld calculators…by the 90’s everyone had one in their backpack.
    Solution: Don’t give your child a device like this… I’m sorry, but no 12 year old needs an iphone or even a cell phone. Also, you can do what I have mentioned below to your child’s laptop…
  2. Library. Once the kid is out of the children’s room they can browse whatever they want. Infact, in most children’s room they have a legal right to browse porn if they wanted to. Infact, in some places there are one user per computer rules that would make it so a child could ask the parent not to watch and the library would oblige.
    Let’s think about this… a child tells their parent that they cannot watch what they are doing. *Result:*The parent picks the child up, and brings him/her home.
  3. Windows is ******. There are 10,000 ways to get around windows and any windows program once they know its there, and believe me, they’re looking. You can simply corrupt a root file of different programs and take them down. I’ve taken down norton (and they claim its impossible) and McAfee, both of which offer net restrictions.
    I would LOVE to see any attempt at getting around these two pieces of software while still in a windows or mac environment:
    www1.k9webprotection.com/ (If you corrupt the registry info for this software, it blocks ALL network packets–meaning that there is absolutely no transmission of information over the web.)
    opendns.com/
  4. Language. Teens figured out a long time ago that parents don’t know what their saying if they talk in leet or another code language. Don’t say “my kid would never” My best friend and I were fluent in our made up language by the time we were 9. We would belittle and berate our parents and brothers in front of their faces…and they thought we were talking about my little pony or something innocent. They can and they will.
    This has nothing to do with the OP…
  5. Tech geeks. Linux makes live boot CD’s that you can get in the back of a $19.99 book. A live boot CD will act like an entirely new computer, and as long as they don’t install you’d never know its being used. Proxy servers as discussed above.
    Solution: Password protect the BIOS/Bootloader on your system to only boot to hard disk. Unless the child plans on paying for and changing the hardware in the computer, good luck getting around this. (Of course they could flash the BIOS, but only if they have administrative privileges.)
  6. Computer’s are full of holes. Mac, Windows, linux…whatever. And if your kid is in school the teachers will tell them how to find them and get around them. Remember the world we’re living in…its hugely anti-parent. The mindset is that If a parent has a gall to forbid the child anything they deserve to be disregarded. From the simple stuff like wiping history and clearing cashe to the more complicated like messing with root files.
    Solution: Restrict user permissions… there is no reason for a child to have an administrative account on any computer.
At best you can hope to prevent accidental viewing of material. If they want it they can get it.
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What I’m getting at is the fact that there will always be better ways to prevent access to this material, as well as better ways to access this material. All that a parent can hope for is to educate their child as to why this behavior is unacceptable and hope to prevent accidental exposure to this type of content for as long as possible.

I’m 18, and I can confidently say that if my future children try to access content like this, they will fail more times than they succeed and because of this, they will grow up knowing that this behavior is unacceptable.
Really, the most important thing you can do is tell your children why this type of material is wrong/immoral/inappropriate.
 
musicality said:
What I’m getting at is the fact that there will always be better ways to prevent access to this material, as well as better ways to access this material. All that a parent can hope for is to educate their child as to why this behavior is unacceptable and hope to prevent accidental exposure to this type of content for as long as possible.

I’m 18, and I can confidently say that if my future children try to access content like this, they will fail more times than they succeed and because of this, they will grow up knowing that this behavior is unacceptable.
Really, the most important thing you can do is tell your children why this type of material is wrong/immoral/inappropriate.
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Your first solution is invalid. Why? Because I said FRIENDS! Friends are the gateway. Sure you don’t have to buy your kid an ipod but if their friends have them you can do diddly squat about it. Most kids find porn that way…on a TV chanel at a friends, a dirty magazine from a friend, etc. There are the rare few who seek it out or stumble upon it innocently on the computer…this any basic safe search should protect them from. There are also now devices that you can get a walmart for around $40 or online (I think they discontinued them) called text’n’pics where a person can hop on to any non-encripted wireless connection (and there’s a TON if you live in any city) and text…I thing there’s a service fee I know someone with one that dosn’t even have a service fee. They use it in their home but it could easily be used for whatever they wanted. and most are dirt cheap.

Just how many kids do you plan on having? You’re never going to let the kid be alone EVER until they’re 18? Kudos to you.

I haven’t worked with K9 but I’m sure I could do it if I tried. There are people able and willing to help your kids get around it, too. My dad and my friends are computer people, I work in IT and have done many things to many programs and I’m not that much older than you are. Programs are bits and bites and have holes. Anyone can get around anything…you can’t just assume that it’s safe becuase some salesman told you that it will block all net packets.

He was talking about browsing IM conversations. My point was that kids are adept at getting around filters and keyloggers if they want to send a message.

About linux live boot CD’s yes you do have to have a bios password or other sort of bios protection but there are still ways around it (using a USB as a “hard drive”) and those sorts of things. Not complicated at all. And the average PC user has no idea what BIOS even are. So my point, again, is that software preventions for someone who really wants acess are flawed.

Many people who are applying these bits of software don’t want the kids to have their own “screen” either which means that they are automatically on admin acess anyway.

I get that you’re saying prevention is good. I’m saying prevention is good, too. But this is by no means a solution to the crisis we’re facing today. Barracading your computer and “monitering” it is in no way going to change the problem we’re facing today.
 
purplesunshine said:
Your first solution is invalid. Why? Because I said FRIENDS! Friends are the gateway. Sure you don’t have to buy your kid an ipod but if their friends have them you can do diddly squat about it. Most kids find porn that way…on a TV chanel at a friends, a dirty magazine from a friend, etc. There are the rare few who seek it out or stumble upon it innocently on the computer…this any basic safe search should protect them from. There are also now devices that you can get a walmart for around $40 or online (I think they discontinued them) called text’n’pics where a person can hop on to any non-encripted wireless connection (and there’s a TON if you live in any city) and text…I thing there’s a service fee I know someone with one that dosn’t even have a service fee. They use it in their home but it could easily be used for whatever they wanted. and most are dirt cheap.

Just how many kids do you plan on having? You’re never going to let the kid be alone EVER until they’re 18? Kudos to you.

I haven’t worked with K9 but I’m sure I could do it if I tried. There are people able and willing to help your kids get around it, too. My dad and my friends are computer people, I work in IT and have done many things to many programs and I’m not that much older than you are. Programs are bits and bites and have holes. Anyone can get around anything…you can’t just assume that it’s safe becuase some salesman told you that it will block all net packets.

He was talking about browsing IM conversations. My point was that kids are adept at getting around filters and keyloggers if they want to send a message.

About linux live boot CD’s yes you do have to have a bios password or other sort of bios protection but there are still ways around it (using a USB as a “hard drive”) and those sorts of things. Not complicated at all. And the average PC user has no idea what BIOS even are. So my point, again, is that software preventions for someone who really wants acess are flawed.

Many people who are applying these bits of software don’t want the kids to have their own “screen” either which means that they are automatically on admin acess anyway.

I get that you’re saying prevention is good. I’m saying prevention is good, too. But this is by no means a solution to the crisis we’re facing today. Barracading your computer and “monitering” it is in no way going to change the problem we’re facing today.
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Hey, believe me, I agree with what you’re saying. Like you I know how to circumvent the majority of parental monitoring/blocking systems.
I also should note that I agree with you that it is almost inevitable that a child will be exposed to these materials.
If you go back and look at the few sentences of mine that you quoted you will see that there is a benefit to enacting these kinds of prevention measures.
Even though safeguards will more than likely eventually fail (because a child will reach an age where his/her friends have access to this material), by the time these measures fail, a parent has set a moral precedent that their child will never forget. More importantly, if that precedent was set will correct and logical teaching, a child will be less likely to ignore that moral precedent.

(Just as a side note, I’m not trusting what a K9 salesman says… especially considering the fact that the software is completely free. I’m trusting my personal experience with the software: It blocks all network traffic if the software is tampered with in any way.)

So, in all, I’m agreeing with you, but I choose to recognize that parental safeguards are a useful tool in the majority of situations until the child reaches an age where it is no longer reasonable to be using these types of software. (Probably around 8th, 9th grade.)
 
Remember everyone; Jesus loves you. 🙂
Don’t take all of this personal or to the extreme.
 
Good discussion. Technology isn’t everything it would seem. We can’t just throw a program at the problem of blocking bad stuff. We have to actively parent.

Also, it would seem a good idea to have the computers NOT in bedrooms, and have them out in public places. Family room, or office situation.

I will try out that K9 one and see how it goes.

W.
 
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