Well, now that I am on cable 'net I have a new problem. When we were AOL dial-up, the parental controls were built-in and worked well -- one of the reasons I stayed with them. But now, IE and the whole 'net is one click away and I don't want my pre-teen daughter exposed to the whole shebang...so to speak. I'm running XP -- Vista capable but I hear there are problems, so I stuck with XP.

What are good choices for parental controls? No, we can't easily be there all the time to view the screen ourselves. Software wise, what do you folks find works well?

Thanks!

I think Net Nanny is the first one that comes to mind.

There are many programs out there, but I think this one has a good reputation.

But, keep in mind, no program is 100% effective.

One of the things you can do, if it's not already, is move the computer to a very conspicuous place in the home. A place where the screen can't be hidden. Depending on the version of XP (I have professional, so I'm not sure what the home version does) you can create a windows account for your daughter where she has to sign in to the computer. From there, you can restrict the times that she can access the machine.

If you use a router, most router configurations have settings where you can shut off interent access during desired time periods. Useful if there are times when kids are home, you're not, and you want to forbid access at all.

Take the computer out of their bedrooms. Along w/ the other higher tech suggestions from Sman & Yoss, you will have a good start.
Also, keep an ear open to what the teens r exploring at school, youth groups, or on sleep overs where they have access to computers. The media Center, friends' homes & Church youth groups (the latter was our issue for about 5 minutes, go figure?) can be breeding grounds for idea swapping, downloading, & showing off. They r supervised but their DNA has some teens hard wired to limit test on this computer stuff.

If anything, you will get a laugh when u catch conversation of what so and so tried on a MY Space or Blog. They talk & giggle, its not hard to catch up on what they r up to. We have had few problems. My one experience involved teen girls who attended public, private and home school environments. My youngest is now in the family room online. Dad just wants to make a point, he is great. .....Do I sound like a mom of three young ladies? Good Luck, you of course will be the best judge of what works for your lifestyle.

you can set it so that a password is required to access the internet... what cable service do you have??

good call with the router settings as well...

if neither of these are what youre looking for, password protect the XP accounts ( do the kids have their own desktops?? if so, you may not want to give them ADMIN accounts.. limited accounts require an admin pw for many dl's etc. ) if they DO have their own desktops, you could always make the internet connection set-up inaccessible to their desktop, password protect that area on your desktop, and you can easily disable/enable the connection from there.

as far as actual online monitoring, we run firefox with a google toolbar... VERY easy to set to monitor activity and block certain sites, keywords, etc... google even has a parental safe mode built right in... hope that helped?? ( IEXE may have the same sort of deal, i wouldnt know. <3 firefox <3)

My cousin uses PC Tattletale on the computer her kids use. You can block sites by entering specifc key words that would apply to those sites. It also does key stroke logging and records chat room conversations. http://www.pctattletale.com

Another option is to hack the hosts file. When I say "hack", I don't mean anything malicious. When a web browser goes out to a website, there is a specific order it takes to find the requested website's IP address. The very first step is to look at the local hosts file. It's normally empty. The next step is to request the information from your DNS server.

If you put info in the hosts file, your browser wont even attempt to access the DNS server. It will take the IP address directly from the hosts file. That means you can edit the hosts file to redirect traffic. For instance, you can enter the IP address for Google (72.14.207.99) and have it correspond to any website you don't want your kid to go to. If you are a windows user, the hosts file is located in the "C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers" folder. Open it with Notepad. It will most likely look like this:

# Copyright © 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

xxx.0.0.1 localhost

Add any sites directly under the last entry. The one for the localhost. EXAMPLE:

72.14.207.99 myspace.com
72.14.207.99 facebook.com
72.14.207.99 fark.com
72.14.207.99 youtube.com

If you do the above, anytime someone tries to go to any of the above websites, they will go to Google instead.

Snoopy

Give the kids a nonprivledged account and then enable content advisor in IE under "tools", "internet options" and "Content." You can set it so you have to have a password on order to go to certain sites. As suggested Net Nanny is probably the best commercial software around.

The best detterent might be an old fashioned one that predates computers get a good paddle hang it by the computer and tell them it used for content violations.

Tony

That only helps for willful violations. Sometimes they can innocently see stuff that they should not see. I once typed in what I thought was the web address for a well-known sporting goods store and what I saw was...well..."sports" of a different kind, if ya know what I mean...

LMAO I DID THAT TOO!!!!!!!!! LAST WEEK! i about died. gotta be sure to add the "sportinggoods" to that particular url.

Great idea! I modify the localhost file to prevent some of the obnoxious ads and it works well. See: Here.

Note, though, than in XP it's the hosts file located at C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\

You are right Chip, thanks for the catch. I was typing it by hand and not paying attention. That seems to be an ongoing theme in my life....

What I normally do is just go to Search and type in "hosts". I then right-click and open it with Notepad.

The Computer Guys on WAMU were recently talking about parental controls and recommended a free product called OpenDNS at www.opendns.com. It works either on the router level or the computer level by altering the DNS server used to look up requests. I installed it to help out with a friend's computer and it seems to be working quite well. I can remotely monitor what sites were blocked and noticed her kids attempted a couple of porn sites the first two evenings and have now seem to have given up.

After working with it for a while, though, I have a couple of observations. It needs to be set up as Administrator and the kids account needs to have restricted access so they can't change the DNS server (if they were to figure that out). And you have to go in and tell it what categories to restrict. By default, it doesn't restrict porn. You can also tell it to restrict access to plenty of other classes of sites - drugs, gambling, file sharing, etc.

Make sure you go into the settings and set it up to block proxies and anonymizer sites also (the list should update regularly). Otherwise you can easily get around it. Just a heads up.

Good point, Coma. Thanks, I did this. The site maintains an ever-growing list of proxy and anonymizer sites that can be used to get around filtering software, but these are not blocked by default.