Parental Controls



Block Offensive Sites:

You can block most offensive sites using OpenDNS FamilyShield. It's free, and if your router supports it, it will work on your entire home network. If not, you can configure each device you want blocked.

Block Offensive Search Results:

Enable and lock Google's SafeSearch. The other major search engines also have similar safety settings. (But be aware, these only block search results. They don't block the actual sites.)

Enable and lock YouTube's Safety Mode.

IMPORTANT: For Google SafeSearch and Youtube Safety Mode to be locked on, you'll need to have a google account (and one that your kids don't know the password for.)

Block Offensive Content in your browser:

For Firefox there is a parental control addon called FoxFilter. It uses both a word filter (which actually works, unlike IE’s rating system) and a user-modifiable list of blocked and trusted sites.

There are several other options for filtering content in Firefox and Chrome.

Other:

NOTE ABOUT SEARCH ENGINES: I've made the switch to DuckDuckGo.com. It's a well designed search engine, and they don't track you and filter you like Google does.

Another invaluable tool is Adblock Plus. It's free and it works very well.


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