Censoring and protecting home internet for parents / kids

Have a daughter becoming a teenager and having more than 3 gadgets, figured will do my best to keep her annoyed by restricting internet access 🙂

Here’s what to do to create a safe and censored home internet connection, this works for all devices connected to a router with a few exceptions.

You can also use a software like NetNanny but if u have a like a few hundred devices kids use at home, iphones, ipods, pcs, android devices, laptops, ps3 etc and you don’t have the patience to install software on every one of them then below would help.

Things you need to know

1. Prevent visiting adult websites directly thru urls or clicking links

This is done by registering up at opendns.com

  •   Create an account @ opendns.com and create a network – you basically register your home public ip as a protected network. they also provide a small client which updates the network ip dynamically on opendns if u have a dynamic ip
  •   On your primary router @ home go to control panel and update the DNS ip provided by opendns, so now all dns requests go to opendns.
  •   Set the security level you want on opendns, they automatically filter lots of domains you dont want your kids to see.

2. Censor keywords or prevent pages with keywords they shouldnt visit.

  • If your router has “Content Filtering” you are in luck , else you may not be able to do this.
  • This is important cause if anyone is searching for like restricted keywords on google we wont be able to prevent results from showing up. The previous step can only block whole domains.

3. Localized safe locks on inviddual websites like youtube – this depends on control these sites provide.

  • Youtube provides a safe lock for mature content, Login in as you and set the safety toggle and “lock it” this has to be done for every browser on every pc/laptop and is a pain to do.
  • Other websites you dont want your kids to see, block them in opendns.com control panel.

* fine print – none of these methods are 100% fool proof, if you are kids know more about computers and networking they can get around these.