Parental control software needed ..

[hank_se]

How about that oldfashioned way, have a talk with your kids on the issue? If you believe in educating kids by restricting them the way you're thinking of you're gonna be disapointed, they will most certainly always be way ahead of you on those matters, and they'll find new ways to access what you forbid them to access. Don't try to use technology for this!

[dragonbite]

Originally Posted by hank_se

How about that oldfashioned way, have a talk with your kids on the issue? If you believe in educating kids by restricting them the way you're thinking of you're gonna be disapointed, they will most certainly always be way ahead of you on those matters, and they'll find new ways to access what you forbid them to access. Don't try to use technology for this!

Yes, technology isn't the answer. Parental controls is not the only answer to it, but it is a tool that HELPS.

As you said, "they will most certainly always be way ahead of you .." which means these controls may help to keep them from getting TOO far ahead before being noticed/detected/caught and give the parent a chance to talk with them about WHY you don't want them to go or view something. It's a little harder when they have images of giggling body parts in their head!

Would it be better to not know when they are going somewhere or doing something?

My son (5 or 6 at the time) and my youngest daughter (3-4) were sitting in front of the computer in the living room. I was cleaning up around the house (no vacuum, just straightening things). I heard my son ask his little sister "Want to see what is on fairies.com?"

For him it was an innocent question and idea. He was doing it for his sister. And while I don't know what fairies.com is like, I would rather not have the "WhiteHouse.com" situation[1] crop up, and so I quickly scooted over to where they were. This time I didn't have to worry about it, because his spelling wasn't so good, and they immediately returned to where they were without me having to say something.

It is helpful, since they will explore things on their own, to know there is that one layer of protection there to help me.



[1] Whitehouse.gov is the Government building's website, while WhiteHouse.com is, or at least was, a porn site.

[hank_se]

Setting the limits at your home network is one thing, but how about the instantly expanding mobile world? Okey setting limits at home is surely good, but you'll still have to handle the reality outside your bunker!

[dragonbite]

Originally Posted by hank_se

Setting the limits at your home network is one thing, but how about the instantly expanding mobile world? Okey setting limits at home is surely good, but you'll still have to handle the reality outside your bunker!

Yes, and that is why I never said this replaces talking and being involved with them, it is a tool to HELP. Saying "talk to them" is no magic bullet either.

How many people have seen the "rolling eyes" when somebody is talking to a kid (whether it is yours or somebody else's doesn't matter). Just "Talking" with them is not going to be enough, unless they "hear" you and are listening.

Like in my example, if I wasn't fast enough (and he knew how to spell correctly) the filter would have helped.

As he is getting older the conversations are more and more serious but at age 5 I don't think it's time to go into those conversations yet.

I already have a mental list of his friends more likely to cross that line. It doesn't mean he can't see them, though. It means when I am listening about what they did, I have to keep different key words and actions in mind. What might trigger a flag from one friend isn't necessarily going to trigger a flag from another of his friends.

This goes for his sisters too.

[ddas4]

Thanks a lot for all your responses.

I have tried everything possible on firefox and decided not to try it through squid/dansguardian. I took the opendns plunge today ; set up an account and installed ddclient through the openSuse repo. However, web content filtering does not seem to happen. This is what my /etc/ddclient/ddclient.conf looks like :

daemon=300				# check every 300 seconds
syslog=yes				# log update msgs to syslog
mail-failure=root			# mail failed update msgs to root
pid=/var/run/ddclient.pid		# record PID in file.
ssl=yes					# use ssl-support.  Works with
					# ssl-library
##
## OpenDNS.com account-configuration
##
use=web, web=whatismyip.org

server=updates.opendns.com
protocol=dyndns2
login=myloginname
password=mypassword
my.labelname

my.labelname is the LABEL on opendns.com website and is per instructions at

http://forums.opendns.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=3018

and

http://www.opendns.com/support/article/192

.

Will greatly appreciate your help. I am getting close.

[FeatherMonkey]

You need to point your dns resolution at opendns servers, ddclient just updates your ip to attach the account.

As for how to configure several ways depending on how you're updating your resolv.conf. You may need to change it in the router or tell the system not to over write as for the exact way not sure. But have a look in yast around the networking bits, it will probably be set to auto and be using the isp's dns servers from the router.

To find out..

dig google.com

; <<>> DiG 9.6.1 <<>> google.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 4881
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;google.com.			IN	A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
google.com.		94	IN	A	74.125.53.100
google.com.		94	IN	A	74.125.67.100
google.com.		94	IN	A	74.125.45.100

;; Query time: 21 msec
;; SERVER: 208.67.222.222#53(208.67.222.222)
;; WHEN: Sat Nov  7 14:56:42 2009
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 76

You'll notice I'm using opendns here the primary and secondary addresses are on the bottom of the pages at opendns.

If this isn't enough I'll poke a bit more and give some specifics.

[Knurpht]

Originally Posted by hank_se

How about that oldfashioned way, have a talk with your kids on the issue? If you believe in educating kids by restricting them the way you're thinking of you're gonna be disapointed, they will most certainly always be way ahead of you on those matters, and they'll find new ways to access what you forbid them to access. Don't try to use technology for this!

Straigh from my heart. I still feel good about the fact my eldest son told me he "hit" a porn site by mistyping. He told me !! So I know what he was shocked by.

I've managed a network in a school for a while. There was this bunch of about 20 kids (out of 1200) who made it a sport to get around all the net blocking services/programs the board wanted installed. Never seen so much misery in a network. Then they tried removing all filtering, and do some education. Net behaviour improved incredibly.
Also, I'm old enough to see the comparison to discussions about violence and sex on television; I have three kids, aged 17, 12 and 7 and still agree to David Byrne's lines on one of the Talking Heads album covers:
"Violence on television only affects children whose parents behave like tv-personalities."

[ddas4]

Ok. This is what i have done. Configured ddclient the same standard way, gave the OpenDNS nameservers on my network in OpenSuse. I could make the parental controls to work only once and it has failed every time after that.

Upon a restart

ps aux | grep ddclient

gives the correct output. However, the OpenDNS IP address is not automatically updated. I think that's the root cause of this problem. I even cleared my firefox cache and restarted my machine - no success.

I even tried ez-ipupdate out of frustration ; but later found that it does not support OpenDNS.

Any solution?

I want to stick to OpenDNS & ddclient.
I found a good Ubuntu forum link which is pretty much in sync with the ddclient README setting up ddclient for opendns on Ubuntu server - Ubuntu Forums

[FeatherMonkey]

I told you what to do ddclient doesn't do it that just associates the rules first you need to use the opendns servers.

ddclient doesn't update the address what that does is if you go to the opendns web interface you'll see your ext-ip as the one in the box.

dig is the command don't care about ddclient, dig google should show you using the opendns servers.

You need to tell yast to use them ..

[FeatherMonkey]

If you've done this then it is related to conf and you're saying it isn't actually updating in the webinterface then it looks like you need this in the conf file.. /etc/ddclient.conf
OpenDNS > Support > Knowledge Base > Linux dynamic IP updater "DDClient"