If your tech-savvy kids are spending a fair
amount of their computer time surfing the Internet, there’s a chance that they
may sometimes accidentally stumble upon adult sites that you would definitely
not like them to see.
Keep your
Kids from Seeing Adult Content on the Web
It is nearly impossible for any parent to manually
monitor their child’s entire computer session and what you therefore need is a
solution that works in the background even while you aren’t around to watch
over them.
There are couple of options. For instance, YouTube
has a safety mode to block videos that aren’t appropriate for children. Then
you have OpenDNS that you can configure with your router or computer to block
an entire category of websites that contain violent or adult content.
There are some site blocking programs (NetNanny for
example) that monitor your kid’s activity on the computer and will
automatically restrict them from visiting sites that aren’t meant for them.
Then you have the slightly-geeky 127.0.0.1 trick to that helps you block any of
the known websites on your computer.
A More
Straightforward Solution to Block Sites
If you are looking for a more simple solution to
keep all adult sites off your computers, switch to FamilyShield as described in
the following video:
FamilyShield is part of the previously described
OpenDNS service but the advantage here is that you don’t have to do any
tweaking to block adult content – just change your DNS server entries (these
are different from the original OpenDNS values) and the web filters are
immediately activated.
If you chose to setup FamilyShield on your router,
sites that contain adult content will automatically get blocked on all your
computers, gaming consoles and even mobile phones that are part of your home
network. It even blocks proxy sites that are commonly used bypass the web
filters.
It can’t get easier than this and there’s no
software to install though your kids are likely to encounter ads when a site
they’re trying to visit gets blocked – that’s the business model of OpenDNS.
