Internet Safety Software

[DrDre]

Hello,
I have bought my 7 year old son a netbook (small laptop) for Christmas, with an eye to getting him into programming. I want to install some webpage filtering / internet safety software, and I was wondering if anyone who has set up a computer for their kids had any advice. Thanks in advance!

I have gone with K9 software in case anyone else has this question in future. It seemed to be the best package.

www1.k9webprotection.com/

You do not need to pay for any software to protect your child. It can all be done for free and articles such as www.mumsnet.com/internet-safety/preschool-children are very misleading. Have a read here: t.co/v1jvfUHtOC . Gives lots of good advice and best of all, its all free!

?? K9 is free.

And pretty much as good as it gets.

By the time they're savvy enough to get round it, you should have had time to instill at least the key messages of Internet security.

Fair point, K9 is free but needs to be installed on individual devices by the look of it...and most users will leave some of those devices unprotected so it can be uninstalled too....there are better central solutions available that you set up in one place and that's it, all devices in the home covered. Of course, in some of these cases if the device is taken out of the home, they are potentially unprotected. Also, you typically find that most 'bolt on' solutions for such things end up with a significant overhead on the device itself which essentially slows it down.

A few years ago, covering everything in your home, fir the time it's in your home, might have seemed a good solution.

Nowadays, it's far more important to cover portable tablets, phones etc on the device itself.

But never forget that no filter is infallible, or a substitute for supervising your DC when they are online.

Complete agree, protecting portable devices is essential but like you say, not infallible and neither is any other form of protection. That said, at least if one fails another may succeed and protecting both the device and centrally within your home is essential in my opinion.....for computers, using 'bloat' ware such as K9 isn't needed though if you have anything modern. Windows, OSX and Linux can all do the same with what's built in and for Windows, you can manage that online so it automatically spreads across all devices such as Windows Tablets, Laptops, computers and even Xbox's....the best thing is that it doesn't impact the device itself as it's not 'bolt on' software using resources...anyway, each to their own but I've followed that guide I mentioned earlier and used that method in combination with software such as K9 where it has to be used (i.e. Android/iOS mobile devices) and I believe the solution as a whole is reasonably bullet proof...although not infallible as you say and educating children is essential too...

Just getting this on my threads so I can have a read.

The BT Parental controls are mentioned on that article too....good feature from BT but we don't all have them but you can do the same yourself using other free services.