.. to be shocked at the hardcore nature of the hits when you google porn

[ElenorRigby]

Try it, type porn into google.

I had no idea you could access porn so easily, there's tons of it and its really nasty too.

Seriously I thought you had to pay and download this stuff!

The level of tech ignorance being displayed on this thread is even more terrifying from those who think they know what they're doing - cf Santa and CliffRichard.

For those getting stroppy about Friday's accurate representation of reality, there is a saying about shooting the messenger that may bear recalling. Not sure it's Fridays' fault that the situation is how it is, nor their job to teach you how to deal with it.

The safe answer is supervision, of course, which never plays well with the arse-sitting biscuit eater contingent of Mumsnet.

This is really tedious. In the telegraph story about Google's purported changes to make searching for child sex imagines harder, you'll notice the bold third paragraph:

However, experts have questioned whether the changes will make any difference.

Which links to:

www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/10456902/Google-block-will-not-stop-child-porn-experts-warn.html

"Former Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) chief executive Jim Gamble said: "I don't think this will make any difference with regard to protecting children from paedophiles.
"They don't go on to Google to search for images. They go on to the dark corners of the Internet on peer-to-peer websites.""

You're welcome to tell Jim Gamble he doesn't know what he's talking about. I mean, why would someone who (very effectively) ran CEOP have a clue about child exploitation and online protection?

Seriously, you don't think that the legal porn industry has anything to do with sex trafficking?

Really seriously?

The porn industry has its hands in all kinds of criminal activity. I can't be arsed to do your googling for you. Google it however and you'll find plenty of reports on the porn industry and organized crime.

And still you refuse to answer - what do you think people should do? As you have dismissed every suggestion, as you think porn is squeaky clean and any efforts we make to keep it out of the home are pathetic, what is your answer all-knowing one?

"I can't be arsed" = "I cannot provide evidence to back up my bollocks" = WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

Seriously. Grow up.

Two extra clicks. And it doesn't go into history, so mummy and daddy can't see what I was doing, either. That was effective.

OK, if that's the case, there's still one single glaringly obvious thing wrong there - where the hell are mummy and daddy when little billy or whoever is able to do all that?!
They should be there,
How come the parents also wouldn't notice that safe search had been turned off when they next logged in?

friday your point?

No, it won't stop child exploitation - that was not the point I was making. I stated in my anchor text that the search engines at first claimed they could not take any action. They claimed it was impossible to block search terms. Then they changed their mind.

So when you say that it's impossible to filter properly, are you speaking on behalf of the search engines?

bruxeur I don't believe I've stated that I'm an expert on how to stay safe on the internet. There are simple measures you can take and I urge you to look at the Vodafone link I gave earlier. They may nor may not work depending on if you have a tech-savvy child who is determined to google porn. I mean, why wouldn't you have a child like that?

I think it's more dangerous to tell people that all such measures are a waste of time, that there is nothing you can do to stop children accessing porn and that the porn industry is actually quite a good egg.

What did you do for your children, friday?
It's an honest question, my two are adult now, and I had a mixture of supervision, checking histories and general discussions about the differences between a real relationship with another human being and porn, along with all the other talks that you have with teenagers about abusive behaviour, spotting red flags, masterbation and body hair, etc, etc.
Did you just let yours go, and deal with shit as it happened?

bruxeur I do believe you have changed your name, well done.

link1
link2

It's easy to find articles and evidence that porn is linked to crime. If you say it isn't, I should ask you to back up your statement that the porn industry has nothing to do with sexual exploitation, human trafficking or organised crime.

I think it's more dangerous to tell people that all such measures are a waste of time,

I agree with that statement. They definitely should be used if you have children on the internet.
Strict safe search is better than unrestricted google whatever the heck you like search!
Even if some are saying it isn't infallible after all. I'd rather not take the risk of not having them on.
Better some prevention than none at all.

By the way, here's how I dealt with the problem.

When the children were younger (say, 5: this would be the about 2001), I ran a filtering proxy at the edge of my home network. It contained a list of blocked URLs, and blocked terms in URLs and content, but more importantly it also logged all activity. I was pretty sceptical about the quality of the blocking, but I had the ability to see what each user of each machine had done, and I occasionally ran some reports on them. Adults bypassed this (you had to log on to the proxy) but the mechanism in use was reasonably secure. I think the basic policy was "if you're logged in as an adult, from one of the machines the kids don't use, and it's after the kids' bedtime, you pass straight through, otherwise we filter". That meant that if we were using the Internet we got the filtering if the kids were likely to be around, which seemed about right. With five year olds, over-blocking is benign: I don't care if some edge cases got blocked. As they got older, I relied more on the logging and less on the filtering.

The mechanism it used would survive a relative well-resourced attack by a computer science graduate for an hour or so, at least (I got my staff to tiger-team a similar set up at work) so I was pretty confident it would withstand the kids. It wouldn't block anyone with access to a VPN server, but with small children that's not a risk.

As the kids got towards teenage, we logged their activity, but didn't filter it. I had accounts on all the kids' machines, and I intermittently logged on and checked all was well (and could do so without them knowing, too, although I didn't do that). In fact we checked the logs a lot less than we said we did, but I did run a report on any URL which looked dubious, logged all videos that didn't come off youtube, and so on. I also had the means to log all internet access via the house Wifi from any device, although I usually left it turned off because it generated more data than was useful. Once a week or so I turned it on for a few hours and checked there was nothing untoward happening.

I think I turned most of it off when the kids were about fifteen. I still have the means to log all activity in the house if needs be, but it's sat there unused. The kids don't know that, so they self-police.

Plus the usual door usually left open, no secrets, I have accounts on all machines, etc.

Exactly Santa.

No-one on this thread has said that the measures are infallible. Not one person has said that.

But taking precautions are better than doing nothing. Which is why I will now ask both bruxeur and friday what precautions they are taking to prevent their children from accessing porn? Or do they not?

I've replied to you friday so now perhaps you will grant me your view

x-posts

Thank you friday that will help many posters.

Thank you.

How come the parents also wouldn't notice that safe search had been turned off when they next logged in?

It hasn't been turned off. It's still there, just as it was, as soon as the child exits Incognito Mode. "Private mode" on Safari, something else on modern versions of IE: all have variations on it. Chrome's better, because your child can run two windows, one set in Incognito mode which bypasses Safe Search and doesn't put anything in the logs, another normal one which displays the little balloons and builds a nice innocent history.

I think it's more dangerous to tell people that all such measures are a waste of time,

What's happening at the moment is that parents think these ineffective measures absolve them of the responsibility to talk to, and sit with, their children. The more they over-estimate the protection such measures give, the worse this problem becomes.

For what it's worth this is what I do:

No unrestricted access to the internet and no unsupervised access.

SafeSearch locked and YouTube filters on.
ISP has family filters which are turned on.
I have password for dd's email and I do check it.
I also check history and have spoken to both of them about internet safety.
They do not have smartphones so cannot access mobile internet.
I can turn filters off for work but dd has her own netbook with filters on and neither are allowed on my pc.
It will never be a catch all solution but it's better than none and my kids are not that tech-savvy. dd doesn't 'get' computers and ds is only 9 and so far hasn't demonstrated that he knows how to bypass these inadequate filters.

No friday I disagree there, I actually think that many parents allow unrestricted access to the internet because they barely understand it themselves. Many don't know about safesearch, many have no idea that YouTube is only meant for 13 years plus, most don't know it can be filtered.

I mean, how many kids have Facebook accounts? Parents simply aren't that aware at all and I think if you start to talk to them about filtering proxies it would just go over their heads.

I've had so many discussions with parents where they openly admit they know nothing about the internet and just leave their kids to it. They have no idea of the dangers. But if you talk them through a few simple measures that they can do, without needing to be tech-savvy, then that has to be better than nothing.

No-one says the system is perfect, which is why earlier on I stated that educating parents should be a priority. I think we can both agree on that at least

As Friday's last post says. You as parents can do some things at your end. It's not foolproof, but can be fairly effective for younger kids. It doesn't cover what they can see when they are not at home, but it's something.

But I have to agree about the idea of blocking it outside your home by ISPs and search engines. There simply is no effective way of doing so. Some ISPs have tried to placate the government by saying they will have a go, but they know it can't work. It's just easier than arguing and getting blamed for it.

One of the important points about Friday's post was that if you are blocking at your end it doesn't matter that you end up blocking good sites in with the bad. If your kids can't get to something they need to see then you can add an exception.

So what you need is filtering software and rules for your house and your computers and to actively supervise as much as possible so that you know if they have seen something bad.

I was silly enough to google a product sold by Lovehoney the other day after reading a thread, and was treated to a very hardcore video of said product in use.

I don't know what I was thinking pressing the play button but my jaw dropped. I also naively thought these things were pay per view. YANBU OP.

But taking precautions are better than doing nothing.

Suppose I went around telling teenagers that withdrawal is an effective form of contraception. I'm a charismatic presence (I wish), and I manage to convince people that it's true. People who previously weren't "taking precautions" now are. They're pretty ineffective precautions, but so what, at worst they're no worse off than they were before, and the withdrawal method is not a totally ineffective means of contraception anyway.

But what else will happen? People who might have gone and got condoms now don't, because withdrawal is cheaper and always available. People who might have resisted the blandishments of their young swain now relent, because there's this effective means of contraception and that removes the risk doesn't it? And so on.

Telling people lies about protection mechanisms isn't wise, even if they're well-intentioned and come from a good place. There are unintended consequences. Parents who want to protect their children (and I accept a lot just don't give a shit, or don't see there as being a risk) need accurate and correct information, which tells them the facts about the risks that they run.

If they want to block accidental access to porn by 8 year olds, it's one problem. If they want to block less accidental access to porn by 13 year olds, it's a completely different problem. The former is, within limits, soluble. The latter is extremely difficult. Making out that they're facets of the same problem is disingenuous and unhelpful to parents.

And I haven't yet mentioned the things your geeky son is doing with that Raspberry Pi you bought him last Christmas...

You can also overprotect children. Unfortunately these things exist and our children are going to come in to contact with it whether we like it or not. There was recently a motion going around which wanted schools to tackle the subject of online porn. To take a look at the effects of porn, about the unrealistic portrayal of sex and women. I think that's a good idea too.

You can block all you like but you can't do that for all their friends. My dd has seen stuff I would never have allowed here, at her friends houses.

This is why you need to have these conversations with them about the dangers of the internet.

No unrestricted access to the internet and no unsupervised access.

Call us back when your fifteen year olds are doing their GCSEs. I presume, by the way, that you're the unusual family where your children don't have, and won't be getting, any sort of smart phone.

I also check history and have spoken to both of them about internet safety.

They'll learn how to turn off things being added to the history in 5...4...3...

They do not have smartphones so cannot access mobile internet.

A situation that is unlikely to persist, and a cat that it out of the bag for the vast majority of parents of older children.

I can turn filters off for work but dd has her own netbook with filters on and neither are allowed on my pc.

Bypassing those filters takes about fifteen seconds for a reasonably techy child. Locking the machine down so none of the bypasses work is hard.

It will never be a catch all solution but it's better than none and my kids are not that tech-savvy.

Defence against benign opponents is not difficult, though.

dd doesn't 'get' computers and ds is only 9 and so far hasn't demonstrated that he knows how to bypass these inadequate filters.

Hey, I've solved the problem of alcohol in my house! I told them not to do it, and my three year old and my five year old haven't been out and bought a bottle of vodka since!

"Telling people lies about protection mechanisms isn't wise"

Who is telling lies? Give me one example of where someone on here has said that these protection mechanisms will definitely protect your children?

It's not like contraception at all. Many parents cannot do what you have done. They don't have the knowledge. So are you going to go round to every house to show them how?

I note you ignore what I said about educating parents. I think that actually we would agree more than we disagreed if you weren't so intent on trying to prove me wrong.

There is no right and wrong here. I think some protection is better than none. You don't agree. You think that it's all or nothing. I say that not every parent is capable of doing that so we need to equip them with things they can do and with some knowledge of how the internet works.

I see your point but I don't think it's realistic.

Well thanks friday I'm glad you know my family so well.

Carrying on here is pointless.

You win, I'm wrong. Happy now?

I've had so many discussions with parents where they openly admit they know nothing about the internet and just leave their kids to it. They have no idea of the dangers. But if you talk them through a few simple measures that they can do, without needing to be tech-savvy, then that has to be better than nothing.

But if the parents are completely ignorant, the kids will be doing the home IT support. How on earth is that supposed to work? How can you lock your children's access down, when you're relying on your children to do the locking?

Give me one example of where someone on here has said that these protection mechanisms will definitely protect your children?

"Safesearch can be locked".