For parents looking to filter certain areas of the web for their children, a free program to take a look at is K9 Web Protection. Don’t let the price tag of free fool you, K9 Web Protection offers many features, including:
- Block 60 Content Categories
- Time Restrictions
- Exceptions
- Blocking Effects
- URL Keywords
- Web Search Options
- View Reports of Internet Activity
K9 Web Protection, basically works by their service categorizing web sites and then whenever a page is visited, it checks the categories you have set to be allowed against how K9 has it classified.
I have not personally used K9 Web Protection, so if anyone has any feedback, please post it below.
Jason Faulkner is the man who brings you our daily tips. He is based in Atlanta, Georgia.
There is still one gaping hole in controlling web content – browser (in my case Yahoo) search results. Sure, I know IE has content control, but if you turn it on it will disable access to many websites you would need to visit – for us it blocks access to our school system’s student assignment and grading webpage and my bank’s online banking page.
Even with content control, there is no way to control what they view via browser, unless you all use the same Windows user account; which defeats the purpose of having Admin versus Limited accounts altogether. And Yahoo is tough enough to get help from, and impossible to submit suggestions for changes or improvements. Image search results are still wide open territory – a gold mine for a teenager looking for pictures you’d rather not have them looking at.