Parental Controls/Safe Internet Surfing

It's been too long since my last post, but the summer months seem to take up a lot of free time. But without any further ado, let's get right into a great way to protect your computer, and more importantly, your kids while they're on the Internet.

The name of this service is OpenDNS. Their website is: http://www.opendns.com. All you have to do is setup a free account, then put the OpenDNS DNS servers in your computer's network settings. OpenDNS has complete instructions on their website on how to do this. As an alternative, you can put the OpenDNS DNS servers in your rounter's settings, and that will cover every computer in your house.

Once you setup a free account, OpenDNS will send you an email to verify your account. Just click on the link in that email, and you're ready to setup your account settings. OpenDNS will let you choose from several levels of protection, from a very low setting that just protects against phishing sites, to a very high level which will protect from sites that promote gambling, porn, video sharing (you tube), and even social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook. You can even enter in your own websites for custom blocking, or if there is a site you need to get to that OpenDNS blocks because of the settings level, you can enter that site in the "white-list" so you can access it.

If you have computer-savvy kids, the best way to set this up so they can't defeat it is to put the settings in your router, and then protect your router with a password that only you know. If you only want to put these settings in your computer, then make sure your kids only have access as a standard user, and that your computer user account has a good password. Also make sure you put a password on the Administrator account, which by default in Windows XP has no password.

As always, send me an email if you have any questions, or I can also visit you and set this all up for you.