As any concerned parent would know there comes the time when we must childproof our computer from explicit content. Children are more and more technology aware. Recently I've been researching what is the easiest way and the most effective way to make the internet safer for my family.
- Take advantage of openDNS content filtering.
- Go to http://www.opendns.com/ and register a free account.
- Go to manage the account for your ip address.
- Choose the filtering level you are most confortable with or customize your own level.
- If you have a router then configure the open DNS ip addresses as your DNS addresses. This configuration will be effective when the computer gets the assigned DNS from the router's DHCP.
- To connect other computer without the filtering you only need to manually assign a different DNS ip address such as google DNS or your ISPs.
- To minimize configurations on several browsers, only use one web browser and install web filtering content add-ons. For example Firefox has some nice add-ons to filter web content. be aware that the add ons sometimes take a few seconds to kick in on the first request.
- Use safe searching on your search engine and lock it: many of the popular search engines already provide the save search mode, to protect wondering eyes from explicit search results.
- Google SafeSearch - go to your google preferences page then select the filtering level you want. The google content filtering is pretty effective, it filters images, websites, and text.
- Bing Safe Search - Bing and Yahoo also provide safe search feature, and in a similar manner go to the bing preferences screen and select the appropriate filtering level.
- block explicit content from other sources: sites like YouTube offer a content filtering feature that can be turned on.
- YouTube - search for the "Safety Mode: Off" link at the bottom of the page. and turn it ON. furthermore if you login you can lock this mode.
