A Parent's Guide To Linux Web Filtering

Roblimo writes "Not all parents want their children exposed to everything on the Internet, especially porn. So far, virtually all home-level Net filtering software has been for Windows. This tutorial on NewsForge, by Joe Bolin, shows Linux-using parents how to set up Web filtering for *their* children -- and shows them how to customize filters to fit their own tastes and beliefs instead of relying on a commercial software company's ideas of 'good' and 'bad,' too."

Excellent

The easier and more accurate it is for parents to filter content for their own children, based on their own values, the less likely it is for them to scream for the government to do it for them.

Re:Excellent

Well, that sounds good, but I'm pessimistic. The same parents who bitch about our educational system but who won't sit down with their kids and discuss what Johnny learned in school today will continue to scream and scream loudly.

"Why should I protect my children. That's what I pay taxes for!"

Re:Excellent

You missed the point entirely. The parent post I responded to seemed to indicate that installing a filter was side stepping parenting by putting the responsibility on software.

Perhaps you should offer drugs to your children, so that they can learn to resist?

Now why would you think of doing this? Did it work for you or your kids? Come on, nobody would do that. Kids need to be taught the dangers of drugs (and lots of other things), but offering them drugs isn't the approach I would use.

Kids don't need all the temptations of the Internet. Hell, I don't: I installed Dan's Guardian to filter my own browsing.

Kids using the Internet is almost a requirement in schools today. My kids (ages 7 & 10) have both had reports that asked for one Internet resource as part of their reports. Now that doesn't mean you give the kids unlimited access to the Internet because of the content. You could almost look at the Internet as going to the mall. For the most part, the stores are OK for kids to be in. You might want to "filter" them to not go into a "Spencer's", "Victoria Secret", etc... because you don't agree with the content (NOTE: I'm not saying these stores are necessarily bad, but as an example, their goods could be seen as "bad" for young children). Installing a filter for browsing can be useful to keep the "bad" information from showing up in your kids browser. I don't actually have a filter installed on my system but rather I do sit with my kids when they are doing anything in a browser. My kids do enjoy a few of the sites (Barbie, NeoPets, YuGiOh (sp?), Lego, Bionicles, etc...) and once at that site I might let them on their own for a bit. They know how to operate the browser and they also know that if they see anything that they weren't expecting that they are to get myself or my wife immediately. The sites they visit are what we consider acceptable material. Now my son has asked to look for things on Google and we as parents have told him that he can't use that unless we are sitting there with him. For now we trust him to follow our wishes and until he shows that he can't be trusted, we'll continue to give him some level of freedom (in this case we don't "block" him from doing things on the computer).

Or more realistically, take them shopping and then yell at them when they want you to buy them something?

Well telling them that you aren't buying them anything depends on why you went shopping in the first place. If you were going because you needed to pick up some groceries, then you can tell the kids that you aren't buying them anything. If you take them to the store and tell them that you are buying them something, then by all means you should hold to your word.

Back to the topic though, filtering is a tool that parents may choose to use to protect children from information they deem inappropriate. As for using a filter for your own browsing habits("I installed Dan's Guardian to filter my own browsing"), I guess you feel that you can't make a good decision or wish to rely on someone elses opinion (which may or may not match your own). You probably shouldn't allow your children Internet access as you don't seem to be able to protect yourself from the content. My approach is to prepare my kids to judge for themselves, within reason for the age/maturity.

Barbie, McDonalds, etc. etc.

You let your daughter go the Barbie site? Shudder Yeurgh. The poor girl, she'll grow up all twisted.

Re:Excellent

Home schooling and and private schooling are always options. Taxes pay for more than just schools and it is good that you should be responsible for more than just your own children. And as a society, we do have the right to tell you how to raise your children. It is not just the family that raises the children, but the whole village.

Besides, it is more likely the parents undermining the schoold system. Parents come in bitching about little Sally getting an F even though she did no work. If parents backed up schools, then we would have better kids in society. Instead, we have parents teaching kids not to respect authority.

There is a time to question authority, but that time is not when you should be learning to read and write.

Re:Excellent

When a kid is in fifth grade, that is not the time to be questioning authority. Questioning authority at that age is just being disrepectful to your elders.

Respect is earned. If my daughters's teacher is a complete idiot, I will tell them so.

My sister's third grade teacher told the class that red headed children aren't as smart. If you silently accept that from a teacher you are a pathetic excuse for a parent, and are doing a disservice to your child.

Kids need to respect thier teachers.

Teachers need to earn that respect. I have rarely seen a respectable teacher not get the respect they deserve.

Re:Excellent

And as a society, we do have the right to tell you how to raise your children. It is not just the family that raises the children, but the whole village.

Ummmmm. No.

We have the responsibility to protect your children from you, if necessary, the same way we have the responsibility to protect anyone else who needs it. We do not have the right, nor the responsibility, nor, for most of us, the inclination to tell you how to raise your children.

An excellent example of that is the recent decision that government can not, in fact, meddle in the affairs of parents who send their children to juvenile nudist camps. Of course, if they were sending them off to brothels, that would be a different story, and we would be obliged to step in and stop them because it would, in theory, be possible to show that such action is harmful.

The idea that I have either the right or the implied responsibility to assist other people in raising their children without an explicit request to do so is ridiculous.

Re:Excellent

We see a child misbehaving in public, we morally have the responsibility to step and tell the child that they are doing wrong.

That's ridiculous. If I had children, I wouldn't trust 90% of you yahoos to "pitch in". What you and I consider "morally" acceptable are, quite possibly, light years apart. I don't give a rat's ass if a kid wanders around in public swearing and being "vulgar" and etc. etc. However, lots of other people do. Who's the one with the right to enforce their moral opinion here? If some bible thumping klan member explains to their child that it's morally wrong to say "fuck" but morally right to refer to black people as "niggers" and gay people as "faggots", do I have the moral right and obligation to go over and beat the kid in the head with my ideals which are completely opposite of that? Hardly. I may WANT to, but I don't have any RIGHT to.

Re:Excellent

Whether or not a person believes that a word should be used in a public place because it is wrong is a function of morality.

Whether or not a word should be used in a public place because other people believe it should not be used in a public place is a function of politeness.

Therefore, telling a child that they should not use a word in public because other people believe it should not be used is a function of politeness.

Telling a child that they should not use a word in a public place because it is wrong is a function of morality.

Short of vulgarity laws existing to enforce a community's veiw of acceptable behavior, you have niether the right to be surrounded by polite people, nor the right to enforce your moral viewpoint on anyone else.

This difference of belief we have here is a function of social liberalism/conservatism. Liberals hate it when someone tries to enforce an arbitrary code of conduct on them. Conservatives want their own arbitrary code of conduct enforced on other people. To be honest, I view the conservative position as utterly idiotic. The idea that other people should presume to know what's better for me than I do when I am not afflicted by anything that would impair judgement and I'm not impacting any unwilling third party negatively is ludicrous. Obviously, society needs to protect itself to a reasonable extent, and that's when we hit laws. The argument is over just how much society needs to be saved from itself.

Re:Excellent

And as a society, we do have the right to tell you how to raise your children.

No, you don't. As long as a parent isn't harming their child, they have the innate right to raise him or her as they see fit.

If that child doesn't live up to the societies standards, than society has to take it up with the parents - it's their right and responsibility.

Parents come in bitching about little Sally getting an F even though she did no work. If parents backed up schools, then we would have better kids in society.

If the schools backed the parents up in return, then it'd be great. If I were a teacher, and a parent came in asking why Little Sally got an F, I'd point out the requirements for each grade level - and show how Sally did not meet them. (Then again, I'd have the policy that one of my teachers had explicit - if you turn in every assignment, and they're all complete, you will pass the class.)

My kids - they're being homeschooled. 1st, my wife and I feel that it's best for my family. 2nd, we can't give them the kind of education we want for them in school.

Helicopter parents

My wife (OMG, ./er who is married) calls these parents "Helicopter Parents" because they just hover over their kids, but as soon as there is an incident with regards to the child and the school and/or teacher, they immediately fly on in assuming that they (the school/teacher) are the cause of the "accident". It's sad when my wife is surprised that the parent(s) supports the teacher's or school's position. She actually got offered $5k by a parent to pass her child so that they could get the kid out of the house (this was in the affluent Plano west high school). She turned it down which is probably why she's a teacher and I'm not...I'd take the $5k and still fail the dumba$$

Re:Excellent

What are your values? Free porn for all kids? There are legitimate reasons to agree as a society that kids viewing porn is not a good thing. The government frequently passes laws restricting behavior of children in the interests of protecting them. (mandatory bike helmets, can't buy beer until you're 21, ban Joe Camel ads, etc.)

Well, perhaps there are legitimate reasons to keep kids from porn.

But there are certainly legitimate reasons to insist that parents are responsible to monitor their children's use of the internet and not expect the nanny-State to do it for them.

There's no mechanism for keeping porn form kids that doesn't involve the government judging content and registering that content or its viewers, or both.

And there is a chilling effect on free speech if one has to get government permission before distributing content or fear government prosecution afterwards. The cure is worse than the disease.

Let's recall the various works banned by the U.S. Government for "obscenity"; DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, James Joyce's Ulysses -- and even Voltaire's political/religious satire Candide -- all were banned from the United States by U.S. customs inspectors. And all, of course, are now considered classic works of literary art.

And as I noted previously, there is plenty of stuff on the internet that, while not obscene, probably shouldn't be viewed by children [slashdot.org]. Will you ban pictures of the Nazi Holocaust in your attempt to make the internet safe for children?

And the whole "for the children" argument is a straw-man, set up by fundamentalists who are using "the children" as an excuse to keep porn from adults by banning porn altogether [slashdot.org].

Sorry -- there are many good things in this world that it's not at all good to expect the government to provide.

Health care is a good, and I suspect that many parents would desire free health care for their kids even more than government suppression of porn. Little Johnny will recover from seeing a "beaver shot" a lot more easily than he'll recover from leukemia.

But the same fundamentalist conservatives who swear up and down that it will be positively disastrous for government to get in the universal health care business -- even just for kids --, advocate government telling us what we can and cannot view -- for the benefit of "the children".

The same conservatives who explain that government regulation of business stifles innovation and creates a drag on the economy, want to regulate the 50 billion dollar porn industry out of business -- even though by far the vast majority of porn customers are adults.

The same conservatives who rail against "Big Government" apparently don't think it's too much for government to vet every one of million of web pages?

Please: the same fundamentalists who preach about "personal responsibility" every time they want to cut a welfare program or unemployment benefits, can't ask a middle-class parent able to afford a computer and an internet connection to watch what sites his kids visit?

Oh crap!

Does this mean parents will actually have to talk to their children? Does that mean they will actually have to teach them values and standards of their own?

You don't say. What a shocker!

Re:Excellent

Actually I doubt this will make much of a difference at all.

Even if they are always around to protect their kids parents still demand that 'public' places be free of anything that could harm their children. The internet is often seen as a public place. Unless the 'magazine racks' are covered and the 'bars' are closed to anyone under a certian age they will feel that the government should step in an ensure that these steps are taken. This doesn't even touch problems with identity, stalking, etc.

This is not a terrible thing. It is a new responsibility that parents have had to adjust to in the last decade. Any reasonable step that can be enacted with little cost that does not prevent another's right to use the internet should be enacted.

The 'internet' is still in a state of tremendous change. There is no way that a reasonable response can be created that will stand the test of time. Any response now will fall far short of the ideal. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, though. As we develop new techniques to match the internet's development we'll learn valuable lessens.

It's not much different than spam. Techniques come, are honed, changed, and then go. We all expect (and know) that eventually the tide will turn and spam will be managed effectively. Similarily, we all know and expect that certian regulations will be set in place that will make it difficult for minors to open themselves to crimes of opportunity or exposure to things which the law currently says should be restricted to adults (or to minors only under adult supervision).

This article is good for the tech savvy parent, but it certianly will not affect the majority opinion.

-Adam

Re:Excellent

Even if they are always around to protect their kids parents still demand that 'public' places be free of anything that could harm their children.

This is exactly why they will end up with weak offspring that will be killed in the first round of purges.

Pediatricians usually recommend one have furry pets and send one's kids to day care, pre-school so the little tykes actually get sick and build up their immune system. The offspring of the parents who use those "antibacterial" wipes and soaps are the ones who will die in the first wave of plagues.

This brings us to environment. Only by exposing one's kids to life in the real world (of which, Teletubbies and Barney are only a small part), can those kids grow up strong and able to deal with life outside the Master Planned Community, lest they be killed in the waves of immigrations that overrun the MPCs.

Re:Excellent

You have a very interesting style of discussing a very common belief. I'm assume you are not using particular language to offend - perhaps this is how you really talk about this subject.

There is some good in the idea that one should expose children to many variants of disease and illness to build a healthy immune system while they are young and physically able to handle the ravages of such bacteria and virus.

But that doesn't prove your point.

Subjecting a child's body to alcohol, nicotine, polio, etc is provably detrimental to their physical health. To say that there are no mental or emotional equivilants to these compounds is to dismiss decades and centuries of behavioral studies and observation.

"The beginning of a habit is like an invisible thread, but every time we repeat the act we strengthen the strand, add to it another filament, until it becomes a great cable and binds us irrevocably in thought and act." -Orison Swett Marden

While you and I may disagree on what specific emotional and intellectual activites are worth restricting to adults I suspect you may agree that there are such limits you wouldn't want your children to pass. I could come up with a million hypotheticals, and many (many!) actual examples - but I'm sure you are equally imaginative.

-Adam

Re:Excellent

This brings us to environment. Only by exposing one's kids to life in the real world ... can those kids grow up strong and able to deal with life outside the Master Planned Community, lest they be killed in the waves of immigrations that overrun the MPCs

I only wish to add a little something to this, which is that children will not so much learn purely from exposure, but from watching their parents deal with the exposure. I guess most of what we're talking about with filtering is naked people. Well, a child seeing nudity may or may not learn anything, but watching whether his father pervs, looks away or just accepts will surely guide his future behaviour.

Re:look at the typical people demanding filters...

Considering that the people usually screaming the loudest for government to "protect" their children are usually the dimmest bulb in the marquee sign

You miss the point entirely. This article is good because it puts the power of filtering in the hands of the parent, where it belongs *NOT* the government.

we have a few on our street who demand "GO SLOW! We love our children!" signs from the town instead of teaching their kids not to run into the road

You're obviously not a parent. If you were, you'd never make such a moronic statement. Kids do stupid things. You can teach your child not to run in the road - is that a guarantee that 100% of the time the lesson is going to stick?? Hell no!!!! That's why residential neighborhoods usually cap the speed limit at 25.

I don't see how filtering for linux is going to help. You're not very likely to find linux running in in a trailer park, folks.

Insightful, my ass. This article isn't for Joe Sixpack. It's for Linux users who want a filtering solution. If I'm a Linux user, and I want to apply net filtering for my kids, this is how I do it. Pretty simple logic, huh bubba??

Re:Why filter?

I can't personally understand why parents want to filter the internet for their children

Well, I am a parent and the reasons are not always what you'd think. First, note that my 3 year-old doesn't do any more with our computers than type his name and those of his friends (hey, it makes him happy :-) Even so, his mother and I have already agreed that when he needs a computer, it will be in plain sight so we can occasionally glance over at what he's doing. I personally don't think filtering is worth the effort.

That said, children vary in their responses to different things. I tried watching Miyazaki's Spirited Away with him. Yeah, I read the "scary for kids" warning, but I figured I'd gauge his response to it. He was terrified. By what you ask? The scene where the child's parents turn into pigs. He's not afraid of pigs, he thinks they're funny. But he was terrified that his mother and I might turn into pigs like in the movie. Make sense? No, but he's three years old!

In real life, we already have issues with him being influenced by kids whose parents (if you can call them that) apparently have wildly different ideas about childrearing than we. So he already knows a few words he we don't want him using and has made a few statements that would be pretty nerve-wracking if he actually knew what they meant. We can handle stuff like this because it's out front. If he were learning this stuff online it would be much more difficult to figure out the source and decide how to handle it.

Most parents' response to the net is similar to how they view books or movies: I don't want my son watching "Saving Private Ryan" for quite a while because I know how many nightmares he'll have. But if he happens to see the occasional bare tit on TV, no big deal. He'll just giggle and forget about it.

The fundamental issue is that of not exposing a child to material that he's not yet ready for. And this decision should rest solely with the parent. Our job's hard enough as it is; for those who want to use it, filtering is just one more tool.

Fun with Filtering...

A nice how-to. This could be fun in the hands of kids to filter their parents Internet to only include toys and cartoons and... uhm... slashdot...

Re:Why Censor?

Man, if you think the only things that you can find on the Internet are naked people and goatse, you must have been on the Internet for all of about 8 seconds.

Parents need to protect their kids from extreme pornography, highly graphic images (like rotten.com and the like), and websites that foster extreme viewpoints and hate speech, like the Aryan Nations. These things can have a much more profound impact on a child's immature mind than it would on a mature and rational adult's mind.

What your personal threshold for your family is as to how extreme content has to be before you feel the need to protect your kids from it is dependent entirely on your own belief system. This is why systems that allow the parents to decide criteria, rather than depending on things like Net Nanny, is so attractive.

Re:Why Censor?

I'm not a parent... So take everything I say with a grain of salt.

I have been on the internet for 10 years. Back then I was 17, which means I was not really a child. However one thing I learned quite quickly is that you have to search for porn/hatespeech/$fill_in_gross_stuff. Yes, I know rotten.com and I have visited it. Stuff there was quite a curiosity the first time I saw it.

Now, 10 years ago there was a child in this house. My sister. She was 12 back then. I did not once see anything questionable on her screen, nor in her browser cache (I used to monitor her stuff as a worried brother, my parents couldn't have done it) This means: if your kids go and visit those sites they have searched for it, or got the link from a friend. In the latter case you can be pretty sure they that they would have gotten the information anyways. I mean: how hard is it to go over to your friends place and ask him/her to show the site that you couldn't visit at home.

So, if I'm ever a parent, I'll just make sure to monitor what my kids do and not block their access. If I catch them doing something I can't condone then it'll just be time for a little chat.

It's all pretty subjective.

I grew up in a farming community. Around farms. Farms with stupid people and dangerous machinery on them. Trust me, I saw far more horrible things than rotten.com nearly every week.

I honestly don't see what the problem is. Although my world view has changed somewhat over the years, I don't *think* I react that differently to things now as to how I reacted when I was, say, 12 years old.

Re:Why Censor?

Really, is only naked women or men. In Mozilla Firebird, I have setted it to "Block images from goat.cx" (not visit!) and if my kids pictures of naked people find, fine. I did as child. I run linux but don't need this.

Well, there's naked people, and then there's porn. Personally I'm more worried about sites like bangbus which come 1/2 inch from condoning rape. I don't want my son treating women like that, and I don't want my daughter being treated like that, clothes on or off.

As friend said "You Americans are so puritanical!"

And that is just insulting. How do you resolve the above stereotype with the fact that most the porn *origninates* in the States? I suppose you think each and every German wears liederhosen too?

You need to be shocked into reality

Go to Google and type in a bunch of keywords which would represent the most disgusting and/or disturbing idea you can think of. You'll get hits. With pictures.

Then go looking for news articles about kids being lured to their death by people in chat rooms, etc. You'll find plenty.

You need to monitor what your kids are doing on the net. The children aren't responsible for their actions, You are.

Nice one!

This could really help push Linux for schools and libraries. (who don't need the extra expense of the "secure" kiosk's their paying for now.)

~G

I might as well say it first

So there are what, 4 people using linux at home that also have intimate enough relationships to actually produce offspring

Another filter

Make sure you add /. to that filter if you ever want your kids to grow up to be productive human beings. Otherwise they'll be just like the rest of us, lurking around until the next item is posted. I've got some work to go not do now ...

Bumper Car for OS X

Those fun-loving shareware dudes and dames over at Freeverse [freeverse.com] have a customizable browser for kids, aptly named BumperCar [freeverse.com]. Don't know much about it, but I happened to see it on a browsing jag yesterday, and thought I'd mention it here.

Censorware by any other name...

I thought we were mostly in agreement here. Consorware is bad. [slashdot.org] Filters don't work.

Why is it that censorware suddenly becomes good when it's implemented by an open source program?

Re:Censorware by any other name...

I don't know that most people really object to censorware as a concept to protect kids. What people object to is installing censorware in public, government-funded institutions like libraries where non-children can be affected by them, thus limiting constitutional rights.

Other people using these things in their own home is none of your business, and if you make it your business, you're the one violating people's rights.

Parenting by any other name...

I thought we were mostly in agreement here. Parenting is good.

Putting limits on material they want their children exposed to is a HUGE part of parenting. So why do you oppose software intended to let parents do just that?

Well....

Granted all the software is released under GPL and source code included, all it would take is for the kid to either A) Learn a little C++ (or whatever language this software is coded in) to make the software worthless or B) Start hunting for a patch that someone else was nice enough to build. Though if your kid can learn C++ I presume he's probably mature enough to view anything he wants and parents should stay back. However full censorship in Linux,IMHO because of the nature of open source is just next to impossible. As it should be though :-)

I think configuring it yourself is better

This is better than letting some company configure it for you. A lot of the companies that make filtering software don't even allow you to know what their critiera is for blocking a site.

On the other hand, I tend to think that when my daughter becomes interested enough in sex to seek out these kinds of pages, that maybe it is better that she be able to.

Stumbles right out of the gate

"The only software you need to set up parental filters under GNU/Linux is iptables, Dan's Guardian, and Squid."

That's two too many, as far as the target audience is concerned. I'm no GNU/Linux programmer or anything, but what's stopping people from putting that all in one single installer?

I'll admit I didn't read on to see (God forbid) what other numerous (supposedly "easy") hoops that parents would have to jump through to get the desired result. Not that it matters; they'd probably already lost most of their target audience.

Went back and RTFA...

...and it's even worse than I originally thought. If by some miracle that Average Parent User trudged through the installation of the three programs, there is NO WAY IN HELL that they are going to be competant enough (let alone willing) to configure them all without throwing their hands up in frustration.

What "average" users do you know that would be comfortable with modifying .conf files and all that other crap that this forces them to do?

Anyone who calls this process "easy" is completely out of touch with the average PC user.

Re:Stumbles right out of the gate

That's two too many, as far as the target audience is concerned.

Netfilter is part of the linux kernel and doesn't require a separate installation. As for the other two, the entire unix philosophy is build small tools that do one thing well and connect them together. If someone doesn't like Squid, they can use another proxy server without ditching Dan's Guardian (or the other way around). It's called choice. It's a good thing.

Not that it matters; they'd probably already lost most of their target audience.

Their target audience is mostly parents who are already running Linux. The "hoops" (that you admit to not reading yet feel the need to criticize anyway) they have to go through are little different than configuring any other Linux app.

Complexity...

I say just run the box in console mode, and if the kid can figure out how to configure X and open a browser, they are old enough for porn.

Seriously, this is a little strange in it's scope. In the fourth paragraph, it defines for the reader what a "server" is, and then they expect the reader to be comfortable just jumping right in and editing the squid config. Seems like a little user-friendliness is probably needed before we can consider the parental filtering thing taken care of...

GNU nipple detection

I have been developing an algorithm that scans images and can detect whether there is a nipple in the image. If this were incorporated into an http filter, you could get rid of porn and possibly notify parents when nipple-laden images were being downloaded.

The only technical problem at present is that I can not discern between human nipples and animal nipples, so some images of cow udders and the like register false positives. Nevertheless, I think this is a very important algorithm.

I have considered selling this to the Justice Department, as Atty General Ashcroft has expressed an interest in this kind of software. However, I feel this is too important to be closed. I am happy to say the project will be listed at Sourceforge soon, and released under the GPL!!!

Still missing the point...

So much is made about filtering content for children, presumably to prevent them from wandering upon unsuitable content. The fundamental flaw with this (techological limitations notwithstanding) is the notion that kids under the age of 13 or so should be left alone to browse the net.

It seems to me that proper parenting requires an active participation with your kids, whether it be in watching TV, checking out books in a B&N, or spending time on the net. Simply throwing in a vchip, blocking channels or applying hole-ridden filters can never be a substitute for actively being entertained, lerning, etc. alongside your child.

At least I think I read that somewhere...

Re:Limits Create Curiosity

Yes, my daughters love pill bottles. Love to try and open them and eat anything that pops out.

But according to half the people here I should let them at it.

Don't filter, log and ask

I don't have any kids, but if I did, I wouldn't filter a thing. I would install squid [squid-cache.org], write a perl script to parse out the domain names and report to me a count of each domainname reached.

I would tell the child that I had records of every site they visit, and step on them if they kept "making mistakes".

Platform doesn't mattter - filtering == bad

Putting filtering on Linux doesn't make it better. Filtering still:

a) doesn't work. Kids who want pr0n will find it, or find a way to get around the filters; and
b) creates and adversarial relationship between parent and child instead of a collaborative one.

Having parents set up their own filters instead of trusting an outside organization to do it for them almost GUARANTEES that the filters will not be effective. Who has time to be comprehensive on content, given the rate at which new sites are created? The only alternative is to trust some organization that does have the resources to do a more comprehensive job, and even then will not be complete.

The more serious issue is the loss of trust demonstrated by putting filtering software on the computer.

You don't have kids, do you?

You are looking at this as though parents making mods or installing software are trying to prevent kids from looking at something they are actively searching for.

The real reason we want this stuff is so the kids won't stumble on to something bad they had no intention of finding. The lack of trust being demonstrated is a lack of trust toward every jerk on the internet that doesn't care about my kid.

That's my reason anyway. Does anyone here have kids?

Important step

No matter what people say, how futile it is etc etc, it's an important step in getting Linux to be more common in the educational environment. A school or library needs to be able to say "we tried our best!" when it comes to these things. It helps linux get its foot in the door.

Actually, it doesn't.

The article only tells how to install iptables, squid, and Dan's Guardian. It doesn't tell how to customize it to your own tastes or values. Here, in full, is all the article says about customizing the filter:

While Dan's Guardian provides an excellent filter all by itself, you may want to exercise further control over the Web filtering by editing the other files in the /etc/dansguardian directory that contain external blacklists. Blacklists from squidGuard and URLBlacklist work perfectly with Dan's Guardian. Each file contains a brief explanation for its contents to make configuration easier.

So what we have is a case of relying on "Dan's" ideas of good and bad, rather than a commercial company's. Not a huge improvement on the face of it if parents are just going to install an open-source tool rather than a commercial one. Better yet would be to educate the kids and monitor their behavior rather than trusting some blanket censorship tool, open-source or not.

Still No Substitute For Close Supervision

While this might take care of keeping kids off a large number of porn sites, it still will allow kids through to sites with all pictures. Those can't be filtered by keyword.

My personal belief is that kids under a certain age should NEVER be on the Internet without close supervision. As the kids get older, they should be given more freedom to explore by themselves, but monitoring software is still a good idea.

A close friend of mine who's 18 and getting ready to go off to college still isn't allowed on the computer when her mom is at work during the day. The computer is password protected so the mom has to be around when they're on it. They just accept it and deal with it. She doesn't sit and watch over their shoulder now that they're older, but she's at least around and able to glance at the screen occasionally.

I don't know that this will work ...

Frankly, you're not going to beat sitting down with your kids and talking to them about where to go on the net and where not to. I mean this software helps but isn't that hard to get around. All the kid really has to do is boot the system with knoppix or root the box. Some people might laugh at that notion but think of what you would do at this age. Most linux people have that sort of "I want to do this just because I can" mentality. If that gene has passed on, you'll need a little more than iptables. :)

When I was 10, my dad had a net-nanny type program on the machine allegedly to protect my younger brother. It timed internet access and cut you off after a certain period. So I opened up regedit and ripped the program out manually. Sure, the system was barely functional, the network connection didn't work at all and the machine needed to be reinstalled - but that nanny software never came back.

Oh Really?

Regarding all the "kids will hack it" and "watch your kids" content so far.

The underlying issue is quite simple - Access to the Internet is the equivalent of allowing your kids to leave the yard without permission, not bothering to know where they are, who they're contacting or being contacted by and generally leaving them at the mercy of the big, bad world.

So, establishing them on isolated segement NAT'd computers where every single 0 and 1 goes through a router that their parents manage or through a proxy service of the same circumstance isn't anything more complicated than insuring that Jack or Jane ask permission to leave the yard and to know where they're going and who they'll see when they do.

With kids, you don't throw out the rules for sake of convenience or with the idea of being "progressive" about child rearing. The consequences are just too dire.

Bayesian Filters Applied to Web Content

Has anyone applied a Bayesian filter to web content? This would be an interesting way to give the filter a set of initial conditions from which it could derive an ever-increasing better filtration of content based off the parent's initial criteria.

If there is a pre-existing application, I would interested to know.

Drop broadband

Only use dialup. with a 14.4 modem.

Porn will take too long to transmit. They will be browsing without images in no time!

What a waste...

This whole article is a complete waste since we all know that people who use Linux cannot attract the opposite sex which therefore means that they won't ever be able to have children. Its in the GPL too, somewhere around the 30th line...

"If you can comprehend the aforementioned statements and use this software, you will not get laid. Ever. I know this because I'm RMS and chicks dig bearded guys. I haven't been laid yet so you won't either."

Still, we all know that chicks dig BSD instead.

Let the kids setup the filter

What I've done in the past is setup linux boxes for people with all outgoing access closed - with a script, the user entered the address they want to connect to (disney.com). The script then logs this, and allows outgoing access to the sight. This way, there isn't a lot of pre-setup stuff to do. With everyone understanding the usage is logged, it keeps them honest. Mom and dad can checkout the log with a web browser. Submitting content took some work to get figured out.... Not a perfect system, just a little different.

culture subscription

Why don't various culture magazines offer filtering proxies tuned to reflect their cultural values? Like a Web "Reader's Digest". Different magazines would draw lines differently around sex, violence, gender, and other sociopolitical issues. Their magazine editorial would fill that out, and let people make consistent decisions through these infomediaries.

Of course this scheme doesn't thwart the porn-hungry mormon teenager, or the santablind pre-barmitzva. That's an NP-complete problem: a bad kid will just go to a friend's unfiltered web terminal. But I note the Slashdot oracle's fortune at the bottom-right of this posing page:

It is a wise father that knows his own child. -- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"

Squid and SquidGuard

Being a little smarter than the average websurfer, I set up squid+squidGuard and set my daughter's computer up to go through the Linux box. She could easily bypass this if she had ever taken the time to learn the basics about computing, but she has never shown any interest when I have offered to teach her. Doesn't really matter, in the next week or two I will be reconfiguring the entire home network to force everyone through the Linux box and use a transparent proxy system.

My proxy system enforces just a few basic rules:

1. IE is not allowed. Never ever. I'm not taking any chances with my network's security.
   
2. She loses internet access late at night. I got tired of telling her to shut down and go to bed every damn night, "just a few more minutes!" In her language a few more minutes == an hour.
   
3. Warez, porn, and hate sites are blocked. I don't think she'll go porn surfing on purpose, but she's a little quick to go to links without thinking about it. She's also too willing to believe fringe and conspiracy theories, but I think that's very typical of teenagers.
   
4. Music sharing programs are blocked. I told her to stop downloading pirated music as we couldn't afford an RIAA lawsuit, but she didn't listen to me, so now she can't even trade music when it's legal.
   

I told her straight out, if you think a blocked site is legit, just tell me and I'll see about unblocking it. I have blocked a few fringe science, religion, and political web sites. When she refused to discuss the contents with me, I blocked the sites. I was perfectly willing to leave them unblocked, but only if she was willing to discuss them rationally with my wife or myself.

"Especially porn"

Not all parents want their children exposed to everything on the Internet, especially porn.

I find it strange that porn is the only content to be avoided that is explicitly mentioned by the story submitter and many comments. There are lots of things in the Internet that would be way more disturbing for children than porn, such as very extreme violence. Until that kind of content can be filtered I wouldn't even start thinking about filtering porn.

quick (and fairly easy)

I have used dansguardian on ipcop [dageek.co.uk] for several different sites (schools, homes etc), and have been please by the relative ease of installing (as far as linux stuff goes) and the configuration options.

I have used IPCOP [ipcop.org] v 1.2 and 1.3 w/o any problems. Sidenote :it runs well on an older pentium 133 box.

Just block sites with garish color schemes

Porno spams seem to have distinctive color schemes. Who else uses large areas of saturated yellow? And where else do you see multiple animated GIFs larger than icon size?

Oh yeah, here [hitentertainment.com]

Access Denied...

I've been using DansGaurdian for a year or so now (what's good for my kids is good for me, I figure...) Anyway, it blocked access to these very comments (see below). Irony.

ACCESS HAS BEEN DENIED -

Access to the page:

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/01/ 15 48255&mode=thread&tid=126&tid=153&tid=95&tid=99&th reshold=2 ... has been denied for the following reason:

Weighted phrase limit exceeded.

Another perspective

Most of the posters seem to be parents here, so I'll give another perspective - the childs. I'm nearly 17, and I've had fairly unrestricted access to the internet for, hmm, probably about 5 years and used it a little before then. I've read and seen things on the internet that could be grouped into pretty much every category conceivable, and guess what? It hasn't done me any harm at all. In fact, I'd agree with the people who say it prepares you for the real world that little bit more. I don't have urges to rip my ass cheeks apart, drive around in a bangbus, or hate black people. My parents set a few (fairly unrestrictive) rules about my internet usage, and as long as I behave in a reasonably acceptable way in general, they won't have any reason to look at internet usage or anything else.

Telnet to port 80

My kids browse the web by telnetting to port 80 from my model 33 teletype. What am I supposed to be filtering out?

Re:Just wondering..

Yes, and they do generally charge more. They are usually run by religious organizations. The PAX network has been advertising their own filtered Internet service, for example.