Mom and
Dad vs. Egbert and Ethel
By David Shamah,
The
Enjoying the paper? Good.
Now, after you read this column, look around – slowly. Don’t do anything to
raise your kids’ suspicions that something is up. Something IS up, of course,
but we don’t want to let on.
Slowly get up out of your
chair, with the newspaper folded under your arm. Walk casually over to the
drawer where your store your scissors, open the drawer slowly, and very
carefully, remove a pair of scissors and slip them into your pocket. Careful
now: Don’t want to make little Egbert or Ethel
suspicious!
Now that you’ve done that,
comment on how tired you are and that you need to lie down for a few minutes.
Then saunter down the hall, real casual-like. You know the drill. When you get
into the bedroom, slowly close the door – and lock it. Take the scissors out of
your pocket, and proceed to cut out this column. Read it and fold it up when
you are finished, storing it somewhere safe. Then bring the paper back to the
family room. When questioned as to the missing article, make up some story like
“oh, it must be a new advertising gimmick” or “it’s a column about that new
see-through paper technology.” Then mention how they’re missing their favorite
program, and when they run in a panic to the TV, get over to the family PC and
get to work!
Why all the cloak and
dagger? We are going to set up a few tools that will help us better monitor and
control our kids' computer and Internet use. Keeping things clean on the
Internet may be a losing battle, but that doesn't mean we can't give it the old
college try. There's no reason we have to put up with Web sites we don't want
invading our homes – and there's no reason our kids have to spend aimless hours
on the computer wasting time when they could be out getting some exercise.
The trick with getting
parental control programs to work is to try and ensure that the kids don’t know
they’re being controlled – because once word gets out that you are trying to
impose limits, they get all sorts of high-minded ideas about “freedom” and “democracy.”
It’s not that we don’t trust our kids – but there is so much garbage inundating
the Web today that it’s downright impossible to avoid the sewer when surfing.
This is not about censorship – it’s about trying to set some minimal standards
that parents can feel comfortable with. Yes, it’s true that all of us who have
‘tween and teen children today grew up in a very open
society, too, but I don’t care what anyone says – the quantity of trash has
gone up significantly, while the quality has deteriorated even further. It’s no
longer about free access to information – it’s about sanity!
Unfortunately, as parents
who’ve tried to impose controls know, kids are far more sophisticated today
than they once were. There really is no foolproof method of locking them out of
Web sites you don’t want them surfing to. Not that there aren’t lots of
programs out there; but there are “fixes” for the more well-known programs, and
your kids are quite capable of discovering strategies others have successfully
used to shut them down.
So you have to be a bit more
cyber-smart than the kids – not an easy task, but a necessary one. The filter
you install should be effective, flexible, and not very well known – that way,
it will take a while for your cyber-sleuths to track down the bane of their
online life, and make it harder for them to disable it, since it’s less likely
that they will find information about how to get rid of it. It also has to be
password protected, and preferably invisible to the casual user. With this kind
of approach, you may have a fighting chance in keeping evil computer Web sites
at bay.
So, here's a nice Web site
control program I've found that will hopefully keep Web sites even you'd be
embarrassed to look at off your computer. Parental Filter is a free system that
currently has a database of over 450,000 Web sites on its banned list!
Although that may seem like
a lot of Web sites to ban, the fact is that you are guaranteed to come across
sites the authors did not include. So, Parental Filter lets you customize the
banned list, letting you include as many more sites as you wish. You can also
set it to check and eliminate e-mails that include subjects you don’t care to
read about; you can add terms that try to “sneak by” filters as well. (like “mor.t.gag.e”). Parental
Filter will also clean out IE's cache and limit use of specific software on the
computer, if you want.
When a rogue site rears its
head, Parental Filter will redirect it to one of a number of sites you can
assign. The redirection list comes set up with search engines like Lycos and
Yahooligans, but you can create your own customized redirection pages
(something that has "Gotcha!" in big red letters will do).
Redirection works with all browsers except Netcscape
– but it does work with Mozilla, Netscape's new identity. You can filter direct
Web connections, or via a proxy which the program will set up for you (the
proxy is preferred for dial-up systems, the direct filtering works best for
always-on connections).
The database for Web sites
and the program's other functions are all password protected, of course. But
you can also choose to hide the program's interface altogether, so that curious
minds will not even be able to look at the filtering setup screens and realize
what is going on. Likewise, you can choose not to display the program in the
Add/Remove control panel. The program can also limit access to your system's
Task List, so the process for Parental Filter (and all other) programs cannot
be stopped or even identified. And you can even eliminate the program's
password dialog interface – there will be no trace of what is causing the
redirection until someone types in the right password!
Parental Filter has all
sorts of other features, and it's free! The author has tested it extensively on
Windows 2000 and XP, and says that it probably works fine on Windows 98
(although there were some performance and memory issues). You can Parental
Filter from http://users.tpg.com.au/adslgoej.
But who says the kids need
so much time on the PC anyway? The less time the kids have to try and
"hack" into your filter program, the better. Windows XP or 2000
allows you to easily limit the amount of time users are allowed to use the
computer, and what those hours should be. While there are commercial and
shareware applications that will allow you to limit or lock out users after a
specific amount of time, you can do this easily and for free if you have
Windows XP or 2000.
If you haven't done it
already, you should set up separate accounts for the kids, so you can set up a
control policy that will limit their access to the computer at specific times
or even their ability to use programs or folders you'd rather they not touch.
Log into Windows as Administrator (likely your default log in, if you've never
set up any other accounts). Follow the instructions on this page (http://www.utexas.edu/its/security/personal/windows/useraccount.html)
to set up an account in your computer's operating system. Set up an account
called "kids" and pick a nifty icon for it (in XP). Then make sure to
change your administrator account password so they can't get in and make
changes!
Once you've set up the kids
account, open up the command window (Start Menu > Run) and use the command
net user kids
to list the user's parameters. Note the line
"logon hours allowed – all."
The "all" in that
formula means that the user has unrestricted access to the computer. But let's
say you wanted to restrict the kids account for use on Sundays through Fridays,
3 PM till 6PM (certainly a reasonable enough amount of time to do all the
instant messaging, e-mailing, and teeny-bopper site surfing they need to do). Simply
type in the following command:
net user kids /time:Su-F,
Then run "net user
kids" again and note the change to the Logon hours allowed setting!
(More details on using the
net user command to limit time usage can be seen at http://www.jsiinc.com/SUBP/tip7500/rh7540.htm#4).
Oh, they'll scream and kick, about the hours and about the filtering, but tell
them the truth: it's for their own good. They won’t believe you, but they'll
develop fantastic computer skills as they do their utmost to overcome the
hurdles you've set up!
Questions
and comments to ds@newzgeek.com. Thanks to Gary S. for the idea!