I have young kids. Any recommendations for internet protection?

I'm the father of four daughters.  They are now 25, 23, 12, and 8.  

My advice, use the moderate settings, put he computer in a public place, and be in the room ready for questions and discussion.

There's software that can block everything . . But there's no way to teach if everything is blocked.  And this really is a teachable moment.

I remember being caught with Sears catalogs and National Geographic magazines for as much nakedidity as I could get.  Crazy when you are a parrent.

Pay - Probably "NetNanny".

However, take a look at MS Family Safety:

http://explore.live.com/windows-live-family-safety-child-kid-protect-filter-sites-chat-faq

It's free and it works. Nothing will replace a discussion, though about issues on the net... depending on the age of the child how frank they'd be. Kids aren't stupid, they're gullible and lack judgement... that comes much later.

Have the computer in a central, populated area of the house... so there's observation.

Also, Web of Trust helps with those Google searches. Explaining the circles helps a good deal, and set him/her to a "Guest" account with no downloading privileges... to start.

*edit:

Sorry for the repetition. But then, who'd want to miss a gem like "nakeditity"?

yeah ,exactly !!  I had to leaf through my Funk & Wagnall to see if I had missed something somewhere.

What?  That's not a word?  I've been using since  . . Well . . Since I was interested in girls and thier nakeditity.  

Avoid BeSafe, it will block everything, including the safe stuff. It's like what Zubaz said in the first reply.

Quoting Zubaz, reply 4

What?  That's not a word?  I've been using since  . . Well . . Since I was interested in girls and thier nakeditity.     <----

Bebi's gonna roast you on a spit... [I've gathered the wood already]. "Felony use of Bebi smiley while committing nakeditity."

Buh-bye, Zu. Nice to have known you.

I am not allowed to comment any further in this thread because the Steph-nakedidity rule has been invoked. 

I use this on my step-sons PC. It's fantastic.

You can set up the times they can use it, what programs they can have access to, etc.

You get reports on what sites they have been to and you can add and delete from the list of sites you allow.

It also lets you set the ratings limits for games as well.

You can set the parental settings to several different levels.

Anything they need access to and can't get to they have the option of emailing you for permission (which you can give from any PC) or you can just enter the password on the prompt if you are nearby for them to have access.

 There is a Firefox  add-on called FoxFilter that is only 9.95 a year that I used when he was much younger. It worked very well as well.

No matter what you do, they will find whatever they want to in the end. There are a lot of sites out there with very innocent names disguised as 'forums' and 'newsgroups' where all kinds of crap can be posted. Even if you don't set any parental controls and want to give them some measure of trust, the Live Family Safety can allow you to see where they have been so that you can look at the sites and decide for yourself.

They will know you have it turned on as a little pop-up comes up. SO it's not like you're installing a keylogger and trying to hide it from them. I went through it setting by setting with my step-son when I first started using it. I started using it when he was at an age where I was more concerned about protecting him than I was about what he might be looking at.

Amateur.

I went straight for the Cosmo's.

Thanks guys,  I will try the MS Family Safety method tonight.

Our computer is located in a public space in our house, and we do try to be there with the kids when they use it, but this isn't always possible (especially when the kids gets up at 6 in the morning and start using it).

What's funny from this discussions is how much times have changed.  When we were growing up, we had to work at trying to find naked or half-naked women.  These days its more of a challenge to get on the internet and not see them.

I was spoiled... I got the scrambled Spice channel when I was 12 LOL nice thing was the picture would come in fairly clear too. Ah those were the glory days.

You're lucky. When I was a kid the best we could get was risque episodes of Love American Style or Goldi Hawn shaking her bootie on Laugh-In.

You're both amateurs, I knew where Dad hid his Playboy Mags.  

Excuse me. My parents were divorced and Cosmo was the best I could do. But thanks for reminding me. I'm gonna go drink a bottle of Jack and eat a pint of Chubby Hubby and wallow in self-pity, douche bag.

Once upon a time there was a 'filter' that analysed colour tones on a website...ostensibly to determine whether it was 'naked flesh'......it worked a little too well and blocked such things as the portrait of Mona Lisa.

Pretty much the only course of action is....supervision and Eddy Kayshun.  Ohter than that the reality is that 80% of ALL the images on the Internet are of naked women....;)

After mine turned up his toes and we were clearing out the house for resale I found his 'stash'.... pretty ancient it was, too....almost 'collectible'....;p

I guess I was quite lucky. I grew up in a farming community in NW Ohio. We all had treehouses, usually situated away from the main house and usually close to the fields. Lots of privacy for us kids who made it our mission to smuggle as many playboy mags as we could up  into those sanctuaries. There we would drool over those pages quite literally till the cows came home. Man !!....those were the days!

You lucky, lucky bastard.... my dad couldn't read the article so he refused to buy 'em.

Nah, not really!  He just wasn't into that sort of thing... not that it deterred me.

I used to spend an hour or so at the newsagency [newspaper/magazine store] most afternoons after school.

Hmmm, it still amazes me that they never suspected anything when I asked to use the toilet.

I was fortunate enough to be trusted to use the PC without any parental control.

i never even knew what a computer was until 1991 when I saw my first one, a Commodore 64 and the only game in town was pong. As for the Internet ... my first time online was in 1999. Kinda johnny-come-lately.

I was fortunate enough to have parental controls used on me and my brother.  They worked supsingly well with WEB SITES & set time paramaters but DID NOT WORK WITH STEAM AND ONLINE GAMING!.  I think Net Nanny or something like it was used.  Online gaming BTW could occur outside the times my dad set (the standard message saying "you can't access this" appears where in steam it says "content hosting provided to you by:).  Also helps a whole lot if your kids aren't tech-literate.  The protection also didn't work on p2p stuff either.  After a few months, we found the password, changed our usage times, and a couple months (or maybe a month later-I forget) the thing vanished entirely.  It was also on the router-end of things.

AKA the "I'm sleepy and off to bed" rule.

Blessings called on my friend Peter's dad who had a huge stack of Playboy mags. Woo-hoo!

*Can't wait for Wiz's confession.

The way I prevented unauthorised/inappropriate internet usage was to take the modem power pack with me when I left the room for any period... like when I was out shopping or in bed, etc, then put it back when I was in the room to supervise.  A bit extreme, but we got to 3 strikes, and once the trust for them to do the right thing has been broken... well I wasn't leaving the means available to do it again.

This is a valid method of teaching the rights & wrongs of internet behaviour. I was told if I did wrong by going to certain websites or being abusive and using the computer for wrong doing, the internet would be taken away so I made sure I did the right thing. Some may call this method extreme but in some cases you have to be cruel to be kind. It works so good job starkers

I assume you didn't bother trying to take the Playboy stash with you for lack of a flatbed to move them back and forth with.