This is a completely personal post about children surfing the web.
My kids are 6½ and the surf the web on their own computers. Until now there’s been no need to guard against unwanted sites and content, but now they’re starting to write things like “spiderman” and “ben10” in the search field in IE7 and then browse the different sites in the search results list. Now, I’m at a point where I need to be able to control which sites my kids may or may not stumble upon.
There’s already built-in parental control in Windows Vista; here’s a great post on that – and I was going to upgrade their computers to Vista, but not quite yet.
So I needed a Windows XP solution, and after a bit of surfing I found
They offer a completely free filter for Windows XP (and Vista) which based on a central repository of rating and categorization of sites. If your kid accidentally tries to open site which has been classified as inapropriate – the filter blocks access and displays a block page with an error message.
Since the software is of US origin I find the filter a bit too restrictive, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.
