Best Parental CONTROL- Which?
My Personal recommendation.

Our subject matter today is about parental control of Internet computers.

Which is the best method of parental control?
One approach is that if your children are mature and have been properly trained by you it should not be necessary to impose controls on them. However, there is a fallacy in this line of reasoning. How?

Most of us with average intelligence and experience do not become 'streetwise' until somewhere into our mid-20s. As far as the Internet is concerned, 'streetwise' means the ability to distinguish between frond and HONESTY when dealing with strangers.

Your teenagers have been subject to abuse his speech and behavior by their fellow students at school. But this does not fully qualify them to deal with all the kinds of things they can find in a world where people can hide their identities.

The Internet is such a world. Might as well send your children to some foreign country where there is no American CONSULATE, rather than let them have free reign of the Internet. Well, yes ,that is an exaggeration. The Internet is not quite that dangerous if you take reasonable steps to implement the right kind of software controls.

One approach is to make some modifications to your operating system network features. You can use a hosts file to restrict access to certain websites. The difficulty with this is that there are news websites springing up all the time with content that you don't want.

Another approach is to buy a commercial package of software that already has a huge list of forbidden sites. From time to time they will update this list for you and it will be stored in your computer.

Another method is to get into your router and modify some settings into your router to prevent access to certain addresses. But this also has the limitation that you have to update the list from time to time. The principal advantage of using your router as a filter is that it will protect all the computers that access access the router.

Of course, before you implement any of these methods, you need to explain to the youngsters in your house why you're doing that this and you need to have their approval and understanding of what you're doing. Otherwise they will find ways to circumvent the filters you put in place. There is no software available that teaches your children respect for your wisdom. That job is up to you.

Now, let's get to the point of what you can do with commercial software. First of all, a lot of this commercial software that has been made is just a waste of your money. It is overpriced and the companies are under funded. They do not have a viable business plan that will keep them going as a successful business. You need to pick a company that already has a successful Internet presence and can afford to subsidize a low-cost product that will suit your needs.

So my recommendation is this..Pick a company that already has a broad spectrum of products and services and has been in business for some time. Building filters to block UNDESIRABLE sites is not Rocket Science. And Many business firms have already found practical solutions to the problem of keeping employees off of sites that have nothing to do with business activity. This USUALLY means that all the computers in the system have to go through one router which has built into it some feature to block out any number of sites. This can be done by using only one DNS provider.
Just one of many such special subscription DNS providers goes by the name of Open DNS. They have both free and paid services.

Here is some information about how you can use their service for just $10 a year for home users. They will allow you to use up to 5 computers to access a private DNS server that specifies precisely what you want and don't want on your home computers. Used correctly, this can be a very effective parental control. It is flexible enough to adjust to the needs of the youngsters in your household.

This is not an advertisement. I do not work for them.
This is a recommendation.

http://www.opendns.com/start/

This is a real company.
OpenDNS
410 Townsend St, Suite 250
San Francisco, CA 94107
USA

Comments welcome. OpenDNS is good for all users and goes way beyond parental controls. my training provider uses open dns and the also have resteced you running scrits and right clicking , that must of took some work to do