Safe Web filtering

[mannyo]

You can do whitelisting easily, without the need for a proxy. My brother has done it this way for his 8 year old son.

Before you start you need to know the IP addresses of what sites you want them to access, get this by doing a nslookup on your own PC from a command prompt and note the IP addresses on paper.

Essentially what you do, is alter the TCP/IP network settings on their computer using an admin account with a secure password. Using this, untick the DNS setting for "obtain Dns automatically, then in both primary and secondary DNS enter 127.0.0.1

Now using explorer, navigate to c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc

edit the file named hosts and add what you want them to access, eg.

213.122.131.32 www.anywhere.com

Add 1 line per entry and save the file.

The websites entered above will now work, but others will fail on DNS lookup.

Dont forget to create a non admin account for the little ones, that way they cannot get into the network settings to set them back.

[briang9]

that sounds good but cant help think its a complicated way of doing what the Radialpoint Parental care software does, it lets you firstly set age of user, then lets you block genres ie smoking, violence, alcohol, sexual content etc, you can then create specific black and white lists by adding sites to the allowed sites or disallowed sites, its all password protected so of he needs access to a site he has to ask me first, and I then decide to let him access it or not, allowing him access adds it to the white list for future access, I can also temporarily suspend it in 5 minute increments if I want to use his machine for instance, also lets me schedule time he cant access T'interweb at all and can block certain activities/programs like peer to peer sharing, IM, mail, chat etc etc. It does work very well and to be honest the effort required from me isnt as huge as I might have hinted at in my previous post now I think about it, (particularly as you say Ian that there are only a few sites they will probably visit) and keeps him safe. Most of the effort is required up front creating where he is allowed to go TBH.

[MAM]

I don't know whether this will help, but I use a service called OpenDNS. It allows me to set the router up to use this as the default DNS allowing you to have other profiles which use the ISP DNS to allow full access. It depends on their capability to change the DNS settings. If they are not adminstrators they should not be able to change this. Again it depends on their ability to set up an administrator account.

I use it to block items such as gambling etc.

OpenDNS is a free facility. It uses US servers, but is speedy enough for most.