hello Mama's I need your help, my 4 yr old accidentally clicked on an "inappropriate" website, I just found out yesterday from my two older kids. anyhow not sure how it all happened and I was happy to know that the older kids seemed to handle the situation well by going to a different website as soon as they got over the shock of what they saw, (one of my boys was very descriptive so I have a pretty good idea of what they saw). but I need to find a good program that will keep my kids safe online, so that this doesn't happen again. I need a program that works with both a PC and a MAC since we have both in the house.
thanks for your help, FYI our computer is always in a public place in the house, and based on how a 4 yr old found it, it seems it could easily happen even if I'm right there. so I would rather block it and not have it appear in the first place. I did try to go back to check the history on the computer and see if I could figure out what happened, to be sure it doesn't happen again! but I think my computer history doesn't go back that far.
We use glubble.com. It's free, unless you opt for the premium service, and works great on all computer platforms. You know exactly what sites the kids are visiting and they cannot go anywhere that you have not authorized.
I LOVE the Easy Link by Fisher Price for the little guys. It locks them into the kid safe programs. It did cost about $100 to set up, for the docking station and our favorite pieces, but WELL worth the money for the piece of mind that it brought. They can play on fisher price, sesame street, pbskids, disney all the big safe sites and they can not wonder off of them without a password. They can however move back and forth between the safe sites without help. My youngest is five and she still loves the "freedom" it gives her.
Not sure about any programs but what about through your internet company ? I know some of them have a way to set controls for different users ? I am interested in what responses you get as we will be dealing with this very soon !
I don't know who you have your internet through but when my 4 kids were younger we used AOL's parental controls.
I set up accounts for each kid from my master account. I could set up how long I wanted them to be able to get online, what time of day they could be online, what websites they could get to, if they could IM and who they could get emails from with or without pictures. I could set it so I would get emails that told me what sites they tried to go to that were blocked.
Even after we switched to Verizon FIOS we kept AOL because AOL told me how to configure it so that the kids had to sign in to AOL before they could get to Verizon so the controls still worked. I could customize it so the 14 year old had more access than the 6 year old and it also let me automatically limit their time online without having to remember to set a timer or remind them their time was up.
I even set up a separate homework account that they had to use when they needed to research on the computer where they couldn't IM or email after I caught them doing "homework" but they were really IMing on their account. It has been a couple of years since we have used AOL since my youngest is 17 but they had the best controls I've seen for an internet provider. (I don't work for AOL I just got better customer service from them about parental controls than anywhere else.)
I'm not at that point yet, but a friend of mine recommends
Spector - there is a standard and a professional version.
http://www.spectorsoft.com/products/SpectorPro_Windows/en...
Looks like it is just Windows.
I think he also mentioned Net Nanny.
You could also just shut off access on your router during certain periods of the day. I've heard you can do that in Vista (not sure, since I'm still on XP).
we use safe eyes. www.internetsaftey.com. we use it for both a mac and a pc. have had good success with it. i think it's like $50 a year. net nanny is another one i've heard of.
Try: https://www.computerparenting.com/
Some of the features are "advanced" and geared towards 12+ (kids who already know how to "get around" parental controls :) and allows for off-site monitoring! You may need something more basic though. But it is a great product.
