OpenDNS
I fought for some time with my children and the internet. It wasn’t really a fair fight, because no matter who was fighting, the internet always won.
I tried allowing my children open access. They either stumbled into or deliberately found sites that I found to be problematic. Then I locking their accounts and allowing access only when they were supervised. My wife gave out access to her account (because truly, the only person inconvenienced by this was her) and that mode failed.
Apple has built-in child safety features in OSX that allows you to limit access only to sites that appear on the child’s link list. You control the link list as Administrator, allowing you to exercise ultimate control over their browsing. Unfortunately, if your child needs to visit a new site YOU have to add the link. A little more convenient, but not thoroughly convenient.
After searching for a while, I’ve been using OpenDNS as my most recent solution. OpenDNS can be installed at the router level (protecting all the computers on your network) or at individual computers. OpenDNS allows you to set levels from ‘no filtering’ to ‘high’, which protects against “all adult-related sites, illegal activity, social networking sites, video sharing sites, and general time-wasters.” You may customize the settings to a variety of levels in-between. You can create your own ‘black list’ or ‘white list’ of sites to allow (or disallow) your family access. You can even customize the response pages to show a custom graphic and message to your children if they run afoul of the filter.
So far, OpenDNS has worked for my needs. I like the fact that they constantly update their black lists, and I like the seamlessness of having the blocking managed off site. The down sides are the lack of a log or the ability to track an individual users browsing, features you might find in a full-featured browsing management program such as NetNanny but it meets one of my most important criteria: OpenDNS is free!
If you want to protect a not-so-cyber-saavy spouse, a parent who might be liable to get into a phishing scheme, or you need an inexpensive way to protect your children from truly pernicious sites, OpenDNS may be the answer for you
