I am a father of two wonderful kids. I am also a computer geek. I want to share with my kids my love for computers. Up until now I have let them have limited access to the internet but kept everything in the living room so I could watch over their shoulders. I was worried about the sites they would find, the things they would look for, and what they would be exposed too. I am sure every parent would.
Recently we moved and I hadn’t set up the computer for a few weeks. Mostly I wanted to do a better job of locking down my system before letting the kids on it. I ended up going online and downloading avast! free edition and loading it up. Now I really keep my system pretty clean, but it was nice to see that upon my first scan there wasn’t anything it picked up. I also loaded up and locked down the computer with my favorite firewall Zone Alarm. But it still wasn’t enough.
I could keep the viruses, spyware, and malware from spreading, but there was still the possibility my children could log onto a site I don’t approve of. Now I trust them, but the internet is funny. You could be looking up a subject and get a result that isn’t related and is adult oriented. I have spoken with my kids and they know what they can and can’t do, but why should I tell them they can’t go to Google and search what they want? I have been looking around for a solution, but had yet to find anything worthwhile. However this weekend I was introduced to K9 Web Protection from Blue Coast. This is a free version of an enterprise edition they sell. I installed it and ran it though a few tests to see if really blocked out the sites it claims to. Not only did that happen, but they blocked a few sites I approved for the kids to view. The blocking screen allows you to permit the site right there, but if you don’t have the password then you can’t do a thing.
In addition to blocking websites that have questionable content, you can lock out the internet during certain hours using a simple screen where you highlight the hours to block in a similar fashion to Microsoft’s Server restriction settings. Further administration details focus on the categories to block. It has a list of commonly blocked subjects such as adult themed, chat, shopping, etc. However you can select the custom level and add other categories like government, hacking, blogs, business, and many more. You can go further and approve and block specific sites. You can force search to use Google Safe Search. You can block keywords too. There is also a monitor level if you don’t want to block things, but see where people have been.
There are a couple things that I think are missing. I would like to add new categories to the blocking screen and not just keywords. I would also like to see some other search options like Yahooligans! I have been using this as their home page for a while now and have learned to really like the results and the various areas and activities for the kids. I would also like to see support for other operating systems than Windows XP. I personally am a Mac man.
Overall this is a good product and I definitely recommend any parent use this on their systems to keep their kids safe.
Tags: Internet Filtering, K9 Web Protection, Online Safety, Parenting