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"Computer Says NO!"

Published 16 October 2009

Ok. That’s probably lost on anyone who has never seen the comedy “Little Britain”, but if your concerned about what your kids do online then you need to read this. What do you do when one of your kids lets it slip that they have seen a particulary nasty viral video that has been circulating on you tube? The answer can be surprisingly cheap....FREE in fact.

Here’s the scenario:- Mr 12yr old starts high school next year and has been accepted into the schools laptop program. The schools network is protected from inappropriate content but what about when he gets home and has to do his homework online.

His mother and I have already been through this with his 16 year old sister. Not that we were overly concerned with inappropriate content but for someone who didnt really like school all that much she spent a lot of time on the laptop under the guise of doing work.

Now you could just put net nanny or one of the other pc based security filters on the laptop but the problem is that the lap tops are regularly reconfigured which means anything that didnt come with the laptop is wiped and you have to reload it, and how many times are you going to do that before you decide it's all just too hard. So how do you protect them from the mean streets of cyber space. The answer we arrived at was an offering called openDNS and one of the great things about it is that it is absolutely FREE.

How does it work?

When you sign up for an account (remember it is FREE) you will see a host of different filtering levels that can be customised to your needs. You can choose to block all adult content and weapons related sites but leave gambling unblocked. The choice is yours. You can add sites that you always want to block and add other individual sites that you never want to block.

Do you have to download a program?

No. You change the DNS settings in your modem so instead of internet content coming straight from your web host it goes via OpenDNS. It sounds more complicated than it is. The OpenDNS web site makes it very easy to configure.

Is it fool proof?

No. Like any system it is not infallible but it is one of the best ways of not only preventing inappropriate content but a good way to keep tabs on what your kids (or staff for that matter) are doing.

Can I see what my kids are trying to view?

Yep. There is a statistical interface that will show you what has been blocked and what has not. You can see exactly the web sites accessed and have the ability to block or unblock the site from the statistics section.

What else does it do?

Well, it's not just for home use. In fact its used by some very big corporations world wide. You can just as easily use it at your place of business as at home.

The statistics will show you when the web is being accessed as well as which sites are being requested. So if darling little Adam is supposed to be studying and he is instead visiting his favourite music site then you can choose to block it. You can also block the usual time wasters such as face book, twitter and myspace etc.

Are there any drawbacks?

At this point in time there are no filters per machine or user. While you can install OpenDNS per machine it is generally applied to your network at home or work. If gambling sites are blocked and you plan on having a flutter online with sports then the filter will apply to you and your individual computer just as it applies to everyone else on the network. You can choose to unblock just that particular site or turn filtering off for the time you need to access that site, but this means everyone else can access it also.

In conclusion while there are other alternatives, OpenDNS is a FREE and relatively easy way stop your kids or employees from wasting time and going places they shouldn't while being able to easily track what they are doing.

Let us know what you think via a comment below.

Geoff Thurect	Oct 16 2009 9:04 PM
We used to have a lot of lost productivity with our staff going to face book and conducting personal business online, but since using Open dns we have not only reduced time wasting but on two occassions we have been able print out the stats and front the staff member with a please explain.