Vincent Collins’ Weblog

I recently had a conversation over lunch with a couple of colleagues and one of them asked what I was doing now that my daughters were using the internet for things like Webkinz, PBSKids.org, and Disney.  The plain truth was that while we tried to make sure we were around when they went on, there were times that we weren’t.  For example our oldest is up earlier than we are.

After a lot of deliberation, I’ve come up with a solution.  Well, it’s not really a solution, it’s more of an approach to the problem.  I very much trust my kids and don’t want to make them think otherwise.  The trouble is that there are many scenarios where they could stumble into trouble innocently.  So with the help of Linux, Windows accounts, and a really nice set of tools which include dansguardian, tinyproxy, and firehol running on Ubuntu, I am now actively blocking a ton of  websites containing content I don’t want the kids to see.

I recently posted about how impressed I was with Ubuntu since I have installed it.  This continues with these new features I just put in place.

1)  I installed and configured TinyProxy and DansGuardian on my Unbuntu computer.  DansGuardian is a web content filtering tool that allows you to vet offending websites and content out before the user can see them.  The configuration files are extensive and easy to understand.  As an example, it wasn’t filtering out youtube but I was able to go in and list that as well as many other sites explicitly in no time.  It filters known offending sites as well as looks for offending words on a given site and if it finds something, it presents the user with an access denied screen.

Setting up the proxy and filtering links:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=1222237&postcount=21

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=207008

2)  I then created password protected, limited (restricted) windows accounts for both of our daughters.  This essentially means that we all have to log in using a password now to our accounts on the home computer but now the kids can’t install software or change account settings with their limited account privileges.

3) I then went into Firefox and I.E. on their profiles and set them to proxy through the newly configured Ubuntu box.

Now when they want to surf, they will be blocked with an access denied page when they stray beyond where we want them to.  As they get older, we can loosen the blocked site rules we’ve put in place.  If we discover new sites, we can add them to the block list.  We know this isn’t a complete solution to the problem.  For one thing, they can figure out how to remove the proxy setting but this does provide a way for us to talk about their “needs” to visit certain sites.  If they have valid reasons, we can discuss options with them along the way and open up those sites as we feel they have gained the maturity to use them.

We still do our best to limit the amount of time they spend on the computer as well as try to make sure we are in the vicinity of the computer room when they are on.  In the end though, there are places on the Internet that 6 and 9 year old kids don’t belong and this is a step towards insuring that doesn’t happen at least accidentally.

Believe me, I’m still thinking It’s a bit draconian.  I’m not at all sure if this is the best way to handle things.

I’d love to hear about other’s approaches to the same problem.