Regular readers will know I have a youngster. As the houshold geek, the responsibility for giving the little guy (and any siblings that might subsequently arrive) his initiation into the “online world”. Secure in the knowledge that this would be some years away yet, I postponed thinking about the problem. Until I offered to get my nephews online, that is.
The boys are 11 and 9. Both have a passing interest in computers — the older one particularly is into games.
My sister made a passing comment about getting the boys’ computers networked, which straight away got my geek-nerve twitching. I’ll spare you the technical details (for now at least anyway) but after a few hours I had the upstairs computers linked via cheap NICs through a wireless bridge to the “main” computer downstairs.
I had considered the security aspects of putting the boys’ computers directly onto the ‘Net. From many angles; not just for protecting the boys from harm, but also my own protection — I didn’t want to be responsible for giving unrestricted Internet access to kids under the guardianship of a former member of a law-enforcement anti-child-porn task force. To that end, I installed a second NIC into the main computer so that I could create a firewalled internal network under the management of that main computer.
The work is mostly done. A couple of minor details to sort out, including the enablement of the web filter. And here’s where I get to the point of this post 🙂
In my past, I have looked for porn on the ‘Net. I always came up disappointed, however; usually because my search technique left a lot to be desired — I’d either go to websites in ads I saw in adult magazines, or I’d go via a search engine. Either of these methods will direct a searcher to the porn “malls” (and into traps of multiple popup windows that spawn tens of their mates, and set you off on a frustrating attempt to close them all before they load properly and kick the next lot off). Such sites will ask you for “age verification”, usually accomplished using a credit card.
Such was my experience in (trying to) obtaining porn on the ‘Net — utterly frustrating and generally without result (since I’m far too cheap to actually *pay* for it). Which led me to the conclusion that although there might be loads of stuff out there, there were enough barriers of cost and technical challenge that youngsters would be okay.
Oh, fool.
In the last few days, I happen to have stumbled onto quite “interesting” material. And I wasn’t looking for it either. In one case I was bumbling about and found myself at the blog of someone claiming to be a young lady from Melbourne who has little difficulty telling the blogosphere all about the interesting sexual predicaments she has little difficulty getting into. Another blundering click-session had me watching some quite raunchy video snippets.
About this time I realised that the porn “mall” is not what we need to worry about. It’s the “alley”, the “corner-store”, the “garage-of-the-kid-down-the-street”.
Porn is not the only problem, either. There’s little difficulty in finding political rantings, weird stuff like gross-out sites, and plenty of written-word material that probably isn’t even considered.
Education is the key. Like the parents who withhold sweets and lollies from their kids, and merely drive them to gorging themselves on the stuff when they visit friends, educating the youngsters on what is acceptable and what is not is just as important as putting up a barrier. Those who put all their faith in a software solution, or their ISP, are setting themselves up for a fall.
So here’s Vic’s tips for keeping the youngsters safe:
1) Be an educator. Goes for more than just Internet usage — try and be your kid’s “go-to” person, the one they ask about stuff first. Don’t fob them off when they ask you things, and keep on asking you things, because they’ll just choose another person — or the Internet — to be their “consultant” if you’re not there for them. If you know what they’re asking about, you’ve got a better chance of keeping up with their emotional development (and avoiding the shock when one day, “out of the blue”, they ask you where babies come from).
2) Use *some* kind of filter software. If you can spare the PC (or even if you can’t, thanks to virtualisation) a firewall/router running the Squid proxy server can be a filter for a housefull of kids’ PCs.
3) Set rules for what’s acceptable to view on the ‘Net. Since the software is not going to be able to pick up everything, if something does get by you’ll have some recourse and a basis to punish against.
4) Set up the filter to keep logs, and CHECK THEM. Not that you have to go to every site your kids visit, but strange looking URLs should stand out. Again, this will give you an idea of what your kids are interested or curious about, as well as letting you know if the software is letting them get to nasty things. Importantly, let your kids know that the filter keeps logs and that you’re checking them — honesty and trust needs to be mutual.
5) As your kids get older, establish supervised “shields down” sessions. An hour or two where the filter gets turned off (or made less restrictive rather then being shut off entirely) and they can — under your direct supervision — go on a blundering click-fest of their own. Handle carefully, however — while you would not do it unless you had a very good understanding of your childs’ emotional development and what they were ready for, others may not share your view and consequently would misunderstand you surfing the web with your kids and watching execution videos (a hypothetical example).
6) STOP RUNNING WINDOWS! Bugs and design flaws in Windows continue to be exploited, costing real money (virus and malware scanners, time cost of cleanup efforts, etc). It is fairly well known that many of the illicit sites that kids might be drawn to on the ‘Net are merely fronts for the spreading of worms, viruses and malware. These sites are a double-edged sword: the questionable content, then the malicious payload that might be inadvertantly picked up when visiting. By getting out of the Windows Trap, you can help your kids be better ‘Net citizens by reducing the likelihood that a visit to a dodgy site (even if accidental) will propogate malicious code. At least, install the Mozilla Firefox browser and set it as the default browser — that removes your exposure to the biggest nastiness in Internet Explorer, ActiveX.
I’ll be continuing to look at the best and safest methods for doing this stuff. Online chat will be the next thing on the menu, so that the boys can have a chat with me in a way that doesn’t expose them to public networks like MSN. Stay tuned…
Crossed Wires 