Advice on kids and the internet?

[trueman]

Well my two daughters have finally reached an age where they are no longer happy playing Humphreys counting house or the wiggles game on my computer anymore (Ages 7 and 9). A few months ago I made them up their own computer so they could play their games whenever they wanted instead of having to wait until dad had gone to work.

That lasted for a few months before they started to ask about going onto the internet .."Can we go onto ABC kids?...Can we go onto Dollzmania? etc etc.
I only have a dial up connection but let them go on the internet until the other day when my eldest managed to get onto some site that had a search bar but had links to the Paris Hilton video. So I put a stop to their internet surfing there and then.

Anyway since then the local sub exchange I am connected to has had ADSl installed and I am due to have mine connected up on Tuesday 3rd Feb. I have brought a usb adsl modem with a LAN port and want to connect up my daughters computer so they can access the internet as well. I have a few questions on it though as follows.

1. Will I notice any slow down of connection speed when we are both on the internet together (256k connection) or will it be insignificant?

2. Apart from the usual firewall, anti virus, spybot adaware etc what other programs can I use to stop the nastys getting on?

3. What can I use such as netnanny etc that will allow me to add sites that the girls are allowed to go to and will block them from trying to follow links until my wife or I allow it. I want something that works good, cannot be fooled and is easy to allow or disallow sites without having to follow some drawn out procedure.

4. Is there any type of software that blocks out those sneaky "install on demand" type windows that bring up Gator or gain crap and have the old "Always trust software from gator" etc. These windows look to much like legit program downloads and I do not want my daughters downloading them by mistake.

5. Is there a way you can disable adsl access to either computer say at night when you dont want programs downloading data and adding to your gigabyte limit. I dont want to end up reaching my limit before the end of the month because a program was downloading at night without my knowledge.

6. And finally is there a program avilable that will tally up your gigabyte limit as you go so you know how far away from your monthly total you are?

Thanks in advance for your replys.

[HeadBand]

all i have a really good awnser for is 1. but anyways you wont notice much of a difference in just surfing the net because there is not much of a chance that you bill both click a link at the same time but if you are downloading stuff thats a different story

[Gettinbye]

I doubt you'll notice a slow-down (with both computers running) for normal web browsing, especially if you're used to dial-up
My two oldest kids (10&11) are on the internet via AOL(I've blocked direct IE access on their windows accounts) and I like the parental control features-they work! I tried Netnanny and a couple of the others, but couldn't find one that was practical, between system resource hogs and taking an enormous amount of time to configure. As far as blocking your internet connection at night, I'd recommend Zone Alarm...two mouse clicks to engage the internet lock and nothing goes in or out (optionally, you could unplug your modem at night). As far as software to monitor your total bandwidth usage, I'm sure it's out there, but someone else would have to point you to it. I think the Ativa Pro Netmeter has the feature you're after, but I've not used it first hand. Here's a place to check: http://www.snapfiles.com/downloadfin...earch&action=s
BTW- WAAAY cool to see another parent showing interest in what their kids are exposed to on the net. Don't forget to point them to the Lego site ( www.lego.com )...

[Mickwish]

Blocking internet with something like ZA will work for kids your age. WHen they het a bit older, though, you have to either trust 'em or have no access at all. Education, trust and keepin' an eye open is the key, IMO. My kids are now 11 and 15, so I've been there.

The problem with most dload monitors if you have more than one PC sharing the net is that they only count what's d/loaded on that PC. You need to trun the app on each PC separaely, which can be a pain (I run five PC's for internet at home here).

Good luck

Cheers
Mick

[trueman]

Thanks for the replys. Gettinbye thanks for that Leggo site, The kids will be stoked. I already have Zone alarms and didn't realize the internet lock would stop all access. I thought it would only stop access through a browser?

[PresterJohn]

answers as follows

1. no, normal web traffic such as page loading will not slow down w/sharing unless you both happen to be downloading files.


2. popup blockers and spyware blockers are the two other prgs you can use to defend yourself.


3. to configure parental controls yourself will require time on your side. programs like netnanny,etc will help ease the load but you will still need to actively set up filtering or to explicitly block sites.



4. see #2

5. not if you are using a typical low-end. the kind of configurability you are looking for are only in high end stuff. the alternative would be to run a proxy server on your primary machine and share the connect out to the kids from the proxy. then you can set up a schduled task that turns off/on the proxy at designated periods.

6. the few that i've seen reset their counters when the machine is powered down (so you'd have to keep a running tally) and this also assumes you are running all net traffic thru a proxy server or ics of some sort. expensive routers might track this but i don't think the typical netgear/dlink stuff has it.

[Maniaman]

1. There may be a very slight slowdown, although you probably wont notice it.

2. I'm used to Linux, so I dont worry to much about that

3. I'd recommend setting up a linux computer to share the internet connection etc. Run the squid proxy server on the linux machine. There are many ways to set something up so they can only view websites you allow them to. There are also some nice mods for quid that will block pretty much everything unsuitable for kids.

4. Not that I know of, yet. There probably is somewhere.

5. You can set up rules with the squid proxy server to only allow connection to the internet from certain machines during a certain time of day.

6. There are some out there, but I don't know of any.

I run squid on a pc at my house which is only 200mhz, with a 4gig harddrive.

If you want to go the squid way heres a couple links to help you:

http://voidmain.is-a-geek.net/forums...opic.php?t=333
http://voidmain.is-a-geek.net/redhat..._adzapper.html

[osprey4]

Excellent topic. The thing I would be most worried about with girls is their IM habits. I know there are programs that monitor keystrokes and will flag certain critical text, like their age or phone number. But let them know you are doing this.

With my daughter, I set her AIM/AOLaccount to allow only mail and IMs from known people. So she gets no spam or strangers sending messages.

Let me just add that, no matter how sophisticated it gets, technology is no substitute for open communication. Talk to your kids about what is and is not appropriate to do and to view on the internet. Let them know that you will monitor their browser history and temp files. Show them how easy it is for you to do this. Welcome them to keep an eye on you if they wish.

[Bill in SD, CA]

IM is indeed potentially dangerous for kids your age.

There are stealth programs that take random screenshots during computer activity.

I used one a while back and discovered some inappropriate messaging going.

Some unsolicited and some not.

Nice to visually be able to see what's going on.

My kids did not know the program was there until I busted them for something.

Everything stopped after that.

After a few months I removed the program but they don't know if it's there or not.

Bill

[trueman]

Thanks heaps for all the replys. I certainly have a lot of stuff to work with. I dont think my girls are old enough yet to be going on to IM but it willl certainly be something I need to look out for in the future.