urgent help on filtering and safety please....

[psychomum5]

.....ok, I am slightly scared of stuff that just popped up on google when I was searching for something.

I have Reveal magazine this week (yeah, I know, trashy reading), and one of the stories is about a mum taking her 9yr old for bikini waxing.....

anyway...........the shock factor made me want to start a thread on it, but wanted to be able to link to the article for the purpose of the thread, only to link to the reveal website and mag you need to pay for it.

so

I typed in into google, hoping to link to a site that is free, and terrifying sites popped up (along the lines of paedophilia I think...........never clicked on them, but it was pretty obvious from the teeny blurb what they were.

me n flame are sat here really really horrified at the small amount we have seen

clearly, my laptop is not filtering out stuff properly, and with children in the house I need help in doing that.

please

Google itself has a preferences page which has a safefilter setting so try that for a start.

Do you have filtering software installed? I think you need to buy software for that (netnanny etc) and I doubt it would protect you completely.

They mostly work off a list of sites that have been reported I believe so are always out of date. Some work on keywords, but then you get silly situations where it won't let you go to the Scunthorpe Council site because the name includes a rude word.

If you suspect the websites contain paedophile images, then you should refer them to the Internet Watch Foundation ( www.iwf.org.uk ). You can do so online from their website.
If the images are child pornography, the IWF will take action by informing law enforcement etc. 95% of ISPs in the UK block access to websites that host child porn photos (based on a list provided to them by the IWF) so you are probably protected.

However, you should also install a filter on your pc to stop other nasty webpages etc. I use Norton which is good, but there are many others on the market.

I have norton on the laptop, but I cannot work out how to get into it to sort it out. I have looked in 'tools' at the top of the web browser, no idea what to press beyong what is pressed........(I am pretty useless at this tho)

as for the pages that seemed highlighted.........I have no idea if they contain pics as I never clicked on them. the wording tho was scary enough!

We have pretty strict filtering at the junior school I work at, but it doesn't help with images, which is why we don't let the children go onto Google images unsupervised anymore - even with safe search set to its highest level, it can bring up some surprises.

DO NOT let your child researching on Victorians put 'Prince Albert' into Google images without the safe search on....

at the prince albert (altho that is really quite bad of me)

Which version of Norton do you have and is it just Firewall / Antivirus or more?

norton safe web I think

just clicked on the norton bar tho, and I can do something on it. feeling stupid as I didn;t actually think to click on the norton bar in the first place

This won't help you sort out your Norton problem specifically, but is a helpful site nonetheless: www.getsafeonline.org

Sorry I have never dealt with Safe Web before. Look for Pop-up Blocking options though. Also try upgrading to Internet Explorer 8 or Mozilla Firefox v3. They have build it Pop-up blocking tools buried in their Options Menus. Just turn the security level up (and wait for your internet banking to stop working !).

nah, I am actually already on IE8, so upgrading won;t help. and the popup blocker works.

this was me typing the words into the address bar, and the list of websites after were what terrified us. we didn;t click on anything, we clicked the red X and ran away scared.

am going to get DH to have a squizz when he gets home. for a man who has nothing to do with laptops (hates the things), he is surprisingly good with sorting them out at times. I think it becuase he doesn;t get flustered and start yelling at the inanimate object threatening to throw it out the window if it doesn;t behave

oh, thankyou lots for the advice all tho....I sound a tad ungrateful then