Protecting Kids Online

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losh14

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What internet software do you use and recommend to protect your kids from bad sites and to help you monitor their social media and text communication?

I’ve been asked to give recommendations on this, as well as some guidelines for staying safe, by the proctor of a ‘Protecting God’s Children’ session last month (or, as my autocorrect calls it, ‘Protesting God’s Chicken’). I kinda walked into it - as soon as I said ‘I work in IT’ I got the questions and the requests to stick around afterward and help with turning off GPS coordinates on the photos you post to facebook.

In researching the various software, I think I need to actually install and test them for a month to evaluate them, but I don’t have that time and what my family (with three kids under 10) uses isn’t what your family (with maybe teens or a husband struggling with indecency addiction or a family member who always clicks the suspicious link or a teen who doesn’t know what to say in an Minecraft chat room). So I wanted to ask.

So far I think it’s worth looking further into:
  • Covenant Eyes
  • Norton Family
  • ESET Family Control
  • Net Nanny Social
  • Netgear Genie
I’m not looking at Qustodio because of an unfixed security vulnerability.

My family control is that I sit behind my kids and watch them when they use the PC, and turn off WiFi if they play a mobile device. I know they’ll outgrow that (and so will I). So far I’ve found that router-based systems are great at home but not for mobile devices outside the house nor for monitoring actual communications, device-based systems allow for the best monitoring unless the kids figure out how to turn them off in Task Manager (though one actually prevents all social media usage if the app is disabled, and others simply turn it back on), and services with a subscription fee tend to be updated more readily than free services.

What do you think? What do you use?
 
I’m not an expert by any means, but I think Net Nanny is excellent. 🙂

I just love their filtering option, which I think is excellent and can do a great job filtering out various types of inappropriate content, not just the extremely graphic. The settings are very user friendly and they cover a wide variety of material.

Unfortunately, I can’t offer thoughts on how well it works with regard to texts and so forth.
 
I’ve used Net Nanny and Covenant Eyes.

Net nanny is probably better at blocking things and was very thorough and reliable when I had it. However, it can be circumvented quite easily if someone knows what they are looking for or occasionally by accident. They aren’t capable of running every picture on the internet through an identification tool to see if it is “safe” or not – and some are going to be on the edge of acceptability anyway… When I was younger, I developed an addiction to porn *despite *using net nanny precisely because I found a site that, by all appearances, was innocuous, but was actually connected to a specific type of fetish pornography. (Remember, back in the days before porn became so widespread, ‘soft porn’ didn’t actually entail nudity, but rather, racy pictures. So an image can be unsafe even if it appears to be “technically” not porn.) So please be careful! It’s not perfect and cannot replace you occasionally having conversations with your kids about this and checking up on their activity yourself every once and a while.

Covenant Eyes is, in my opinion, more for people struggling with an active addiction or for older, more reliable kids. It is a tracking site that sends information to an authority (say you) who can check it for bad things. It labels sites that look suspicious and outright blocks sites it knows are bad (at least, it should – I’m currently having technical difficulties with my copy). It will require regular check-ups from you or your spouse to work effectively (of course, so will net nanny, as I said)! Covenant Eyes in some ways a more versatile tool because it gets around the problem of trying to escape by finding loopholes – in theory, there aren’t any loopholes. Everything is there for the person receiving your reports to see. Unfortunately, this can be a **ton **of data to sift through, depending on how much you let your kids use the internet. If it doesn’t label sites properly, or if you don’t pay attention, you may not observe it when a smaller porn site or something suspicious slips through the cracks.

In general, its important to note that *none *of these tools are fully fool-proof. From experience, there are plenty of things on the internet that appear innocuous at first glance, but also contain hidden dangers. A webcomic may contain porn (though not on the first few pages); Deviant Art, a site for budding artists, contains both immensely beautiful and deadly images; Fanfiction.net, a primary site for teenage girls who like writing stories about their favorite movie and book characters, contains XXX level erotica, of which stories about Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy (and/or Snape) falling in love are among the *least *dangerous (and most common); horror sites like the SCP foundation also contain hardcore Gore of a nasty and cannot-get-it-out-of-your-head type; the immensely poplar site tvtropes has info on all your favorite stories – and on stories that cross the line of normal morality several times over and keep going.

Simply put, there is no way a blocking system, however well-intentioned and well built, can fully defend your kids from anything they may stumble upon. Short of locking them in a virtual box, then, I would caution you to pay attention and make sure you have a good relationship with your kids – they must have a certain level of awareness of their own and be able to bring things to you they are concerned about and willingly avoid things they know are harmful for them. With that, and the appropriate internet protection, you may be able to help them avoid some of the more devastating effects the modern internet can have on kids.

From personal experience 😦 , I would also recommend just going ahead and outright disabling smart phone internet access (except for specific apps, maybe). No one really “needs” it for anything, it’s a distraction, and it is also the #1 way modern American’s access porn (immensely convenient, not at all odd to have in a bathroom with you, etc.). You can also add blocking tools to phones, of course, but they are imperfect.
 
I have lOVED loved Net Nanny. I used that for several years for my older kids. Like the previous posts mentioned as they got older, I started to open certain websites more and when they were moving to college it was no more monitoring. However, I also turn off my wireless router/modem at night, even when my son is visiting from college.

Actually for my youngest daughter this is my preferred method. wireless limited and only allowed to use pc with website filtering. I haven’t needed to install net nanny.

I also have touched holy water and said a blessing on computers…(not poured, just a touch). Perhaps a deliverance prayer. yes, it’s an object, but we must pray for holiness for each of our children.
 
If you want to monitor your children’s communication, I recommend that you not act too much like Big Brother while doing it. This will lead to your children resenting your authority and doing what you don’t want them to do. I recommend that you establish an honor system based on trust.
 
losh14 said:
What internet software do you use and recommend to protect your kids from bad sites and to help you monitor their social media and text communication?
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If you want examine some simple solutions, you can try the following:

For IOS Devices (iphones, iPads): IOS includes a “Restrictions” function that enables control of, among other things, unacceptable web content eg. preventing “adult” content. You can prevent access to specific websites if required also.

For Windows PCs: If the parent and each user (child) has a Microsoft account (free), then you can use the Microsoft “Family Safety” feature to control access to the PC and to limit access to adult websites. As the parent, you receive reports of device usage, blocked web sites, etc.

These capabilities don’t extend to monitoring use of social media or text communication and while I can’t speak with authority as to their real effectiveness compared with other options, to date I have found them effective for my kids (aged under 12).
 
We use the --no data on phone, and tablets don’t leave the house method on the young ones We limit use to the family rooms.

I think it’s naive that some posters think having this softwear on older kid’s devices is protection. Kids can disable anything–just watch how profiency levels have changed --kids are getting phones and tablets in pre-k. Some of these programs will work for a while, but a computer savvy child at about 12 years old can get around them if they are determined. We have kids that can reconfigure a computer in a few minutes.

Your child’s school also should have a no device out during recess policy.not every child has fiters.

For older children, the best method is to instill values of not going to these sites becuase no matter what protection you think you have–you don’t…either the child can bypass it or a friend can do it for them.
 
mommy_k said:
We use the --no data on phone, and tablets don’t leave the house method on the young ones We limit use to the family rooms.

I think it’s naive that some posters think having this softwear on older kid’s devices is protection. Kids can disable anything–just watch how profiency levels have changed --kids are getting phones and tablets in pre-k. Some of these programs will work for a while, but a computer savvy child at about 12 years old can get around them if they are determined. We have kids that can reconfigure a computer in a few minutes.

Your child’s school also should have a no device out during recess policy.not every child has fiters.

For older children, the best method is to instill values of not going to these sites becuase no matter what protection you think you have–you don’t…either the child can bypass it or a friend can do it for them.
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I think one benefit of having the filters is that children while young are less likely to stumble on something accidentally. Putting them in after a problem has emerged is going to lessen their effectiveness, because the child is already “hooked” and knows what they want.

None of our children use our computer or TV without us present, usually looking at the screen with them. We do have parental controls on the TV and will probably install some kind of system on the computer shortly even though my oldest is only five. We already use ad blocking and safe search for ourselves.

I think the biggest thing is just less screen use, and when in use have it be a family activity as much as possible.

I also don’t know how much I would be able to replicate this, but one thing my mom did was have our house growing up be the place where the neighborhood kids came to hang out, rather than us going to other people’s homes much. She could keep an eye on us and we could play with our friends. I’d like to be that parent too, if I could.
 
pensmama87 said:
I think one benefit of having the filters is that children while young are less likely to stumble on something accidentally. Putting them in after a problem has emerged is going to lessen their effectiveness, because the child is already “hooked” and knows what they want.

None of our children use our computer or TV without us present, usually looking at the screen with them. We do have parental controls on the TV and will probably install some kind of system on the computer shortly even though my oldest is only five. We already use ad blocking and safe search for ourselves.

I think the biggest thing is just less screen use, and when in use have it be a family activity as much as possible.

I also don’t know how much I would be able to replicate this, but one thing my mom did was have our house growing up be the place where the neighborhood kids came to hang out, rather than us going to other people’s homes much. She could keep an eye on us and we could play with our friends. I’d like to be that parent too, if I could.
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Yes I agree. You can monitor your own kids–but their friends may have clear access either at their home, school bus, recess and so on…

In our home, our older (young adult) kids put the filters on the younger ones tablets and home computer and did something to them so they have no access to anything questionable. They said it’s airtight for a few years, unless a bug gets into the computer. There is no way I could ever prevent the older kids access to anything (or know about it) and here is where I believe values comes in for us.

When we used the mainstream filters, too many websites were blocked for content (words that can go either way) and we use the computer for work related tasks. It was a pain to disable and enable each time. So the older kids figured it out–I have no idea how they did it.
 
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