How do you protect young children from the evils of the internet?
Written by Karl L. Gechlik | AskTheAdmin.com on June 25, 2007 – 12:14 pm -
How young is too young to be using the internet? What safe guards to you put in place to prevent your youngins from becoming victims of internet preadators? Do you but filters on, use special broswers or programs? What websites have you introduced your little ones to?
Are there any programs to run on your computer to let a little kid push buttons, move the mouse and make things happen - to get them used to the computer?
Hit us up in the comments and for those of you out there that are young yourselfs your going to get older and have kids someday so you can participate as well. Hit us up in the comments or email info @ nycomputerdoctors.com .
TheExpectingAdmiN_ _
I love that picture… :) Is that too young?
It’s never to early and they are never too young!
So EduBuntu @ http://www.edubuntu.org/ looks to be a good choice for an OS and set up favorites for sites like:
http://www.noggin.com/, http://www.pbskids.com/, http://www.nickjr.com/ , http://www.playhousedisney.com/ , http://www.poissonrouge.com/
ALWAYS watch your children - let them browse but watch over their shoulders and be there for their questions. Because you know they will have them.
Thanks to Sarah from http://clanmcgrath.blogspot.com/2007/06/kids-internet.html
Keep em’ coming ill update them as more come in.
Tags: Question, Security, Tips
Posted in Uncategorized |
By The Slothman on Jun 25, 2007 | Reply
My daughter was 3 when she started using my PC.
What I did was I set up icons for her to go direct to Noggin.com, PBSKids.com, NickJr, and Playhouse Disney.
Then I got her, her own PC(a dinosaur from work). I gave her the icons and showed her which ones go where. She is totally independent on the PC. I showed her how to turn it on and off, login and how to get into what she needs.
Granted she is only 4 so she wont surf around to places she doesn’t know, and she can’t really spell/read yet so that helps matters with her going to sites that I don’t want her going to.
Also, to protect the home network, she is using an old Windows 2000 PC patched to the gills, with AVG running and her web browser is Firefox. So nothing executes on the PC unless I tell it to.
We regulate her time on it to a few hours a week at best. She’s a great kid so she doesn’t abuse it.
It is a matter of to each there own. I have read some studies on parallels of how much time a kid spends in front of the TV and on the computer as to how it correlates to IQ and performance in school. Less = more. Free, creative play time is much more important, but it helps if they have a familiarity with the PC because their lives will be spent using them in school and in industry/business when they get older.
By El Di Pablo on Jun 25, 2007 | Reply
Speaking of kids, there is a great Ubuntu distro for kids called Edubuntu.
Now, one of the first things I would do would be NOT add them as power or administrative users. Also, on most home routers, you can setup content filtering and restrict sites like MySpace, Porn sites what have you.
There is also software out there like Netnanny, that is good for monitoring your kids. Of course no software can replace your job as a parent to keep your kids safe. Never let your kids have their own PC in their room. Be nosey, see what they are doing online. So what if they get mad at you, they will get over it.
By Anonymous on Jun 25, 2007 | Reply
has anyone used that distro of ubuntu that was mentioned above?
what is restricted? how is it achieved?
we have had a lot of responses to this one via email this morning. i will compile everything and add it to the post when im in front of a pc again.
theAdmin via mobile
how about a quick explanation of what ubuntu is and how easy it is to run on a computer you already have an operating system on?
By Karl L. Gechlik on Jun 25, 2007 | Reply
in case anyone was wondering the previous comment was front yours truly snitches…
glitches in the mobile to blogger setup but it loks like the cookies are working now.
one.
By johnBlaze on Jun 25, 2007 | Reply
great information you guys rock.
By El Di Pablo on Jun 25, 2007 | Reply
I installed edubuntu once on a VM machine. i didn’t spend a lot of time playing with it though so i couldn’t tell you about any restrictions. I think for that distro you would have to lock it down like any other Linux distro.
It is very kid friendly though with a cute little GUI that they would like. It is pre-configured with math and learning games for them. I hear a lot of schools around the world are installing it.
Maybe mentioning it was slightly off topic…
By Karl L. Gechlik on Jun 25, 2007 | Reply
most def. not off topic el di pablo. Its a great OS for kiddies and I am looking into it more in depth now.
Thanks!
By Colm on Oct 6, 2007 | Reply
If you are using Windows, create a new limited account for the kids.
If you are using Google then go to the search page, click ‘preferences’ and enable safe search filtering. The anti-malware program called ‘Spybot - Search and destroy’ has a large blacklist which works for Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera . After updating click on the shield labelled ‘immunize’. Then click on the green cross. There are a lot of horrors out there and even a typing error can land you in them. I wish I knew more.
By Anonymous on Jan 13, 2008 | Reply
Pretty good protection from porn sites, and it’s totally a free service: http://www.openDNS.org
How it works: you use them as your domain name server (DNS) instead of your ISP, and then you can set your account to block porn/other objectionable sites. Totally configurable and for FREE. The only way around it is if your kid goes to some host lookup site and gets the IP manually, they can enter that into the browser and access the site. Most kids won’t know how to do this tho.