Summary: Parental Monitoring Software is a way to keep an eye on what your child is doing on-line. Until they learn to disable Parental Monitoring Software, that is.
My child's figured out how to disable the Parental Monitoring Software package Net Nanny by killing the process in Task Manager after hitting ctrl-alt-del. He learned to do that just by searching for "disable net nanny" on the web. Is there a way to make him stop? Perhaps a way to make Net Nanny run without being detected?
Kids are just too smart sometimes, aren't they? :-)
And even for those that aren't able to figure out for themselves these nifty ways of hacking around what you've put in place, as you've seen, there's plenty of information on-line. Kids helping kids against those "oppressive" parents.
Unfortunately this situation highlights one of the reasons I don't really like parental monitoring software in general.
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Net Nanny is one of the oldest parental monitoring packages around. Apparently it's losing market share, but there are still a lot of people using it.
My very first recommendation is that you visit the Net Nanny website and search their support information. This is a fairly obvious issue, and they do have some guidance on what you can do about it.
And, for the record, whatever package you use - if they don't address this type of issue to your satisfaction either in their documentation or on-line support - it's probably time for a new package. This is exactly the type of topic I would expect every good vendor of this type of software to be all over.
However.
I'm not going to cover any of that here, you can read it on their site yourself. The problem is that I don't want to give you false hope.
And therein lies my problem with parental monitoring and filtering software: it gives you a false sense of security. The fact is, kids will work around it, no matter what you do.
My take on it is this: if you can trust your children, then you probably don't need it. If you can't trust your children, they're just going to work around it anyway.
Have a peek at the search results for the very query your child used: "disable net nanny". The sheer volume of results in Google (186,000 as I write this) should be eye opening. I'm sure that there are similar results for almost any parental monitoring or filtering package. On top of that, sites like PeaceFire.org, which documents how political dissidents in foreign countries can bypass their government's filters, can be used to bypass pretty much any filter including those you might put in place.
Realize also that whatever you put on your computer is fairly pointless if they have access to others - school and library computers might be locked down or filtered (and subject to being hacked around also), but what about the computers at your child's friends home? Or anywhere else, for that matter?
I don't want to get into a debate about approaches to parenting. What I do want to make clear is that you should not fool yourself into thinking that a monitoring or blocking program is a total solution. If used at all, (which I obviously do question), it needs to be part of broader approach that includes you getting educated about the tools, technologies and sites that your child uses, open and honest communication between your and your child, environments that foster good behavior (such as only having computers in public places in the home), and a realization that no mater how much we might want to protect our children, we cannot protect them from everything.
Related:
Article C2752 - August 11, 2006
I used to use NetNanny for web content filtering but, found a much better solution that is FREE! K9 Web Protection (www.getK9.com) from the folks at Blue Coat Systems, is a FREE web content filter that cannot be circumvented. It does the same thing as NetNanny but, a lot more powerful. It uses the same technology as the commercial solutions Blue Coat sells to corporations all over the world. It's not only a great solution for blocking web sites for your kids, it's also great for blocking malware and spyware.
Posted by: Jeff W at August 19, 2008 8:11 AM*Giggle* You DO realized you just told even more kids how to turn it off? You could have been more vague in the question right?
-Leo
Try netmop.com. Can't be circumvented aside from reinstalling the OS. Not only protects your kids but protects YOU from circumventing it YOURSELF. Yes, kids can go over to a friend's house or elsewhere, but its important to let them know you care. And if you use a program that protects YOURSELF then you're not being unfair. Trust the kids...? Did my parents trust me? Yes, but with limits. Your kids expect you to pose limits - its a sign to them that you care - and they'll test you to find out what your REAL limits are. In our household we have limits, and one of them is no computers without limiting software. Same limit for me as for the kids. And it works. I sympathize with the kids on this site that have a hard time understanding what some of the concerned parents are saying. But what a lot of them are saying is been there, done that, and paid the price too. Often a price that we wouldn't wish on anyone. So we've got a responsibility for those in our care.
Posted by: JF at August 26, 2008 7:29 AMim a 12 year old and im additcced to the chats and everything else and i cant not take this anymore can any1 help me out !!
Posted by: olivia at August 27, 2008 7:54 AMI understand both sides stories whether its about censoring these adult content or letting children browsing all internet sites. The best way to deal with it is not blocking these sites cause they will find a way to bypass these sites or softwares. I consider almost all human beings outlaws, we love to breake the rules and disobey our orders from the moment we are born. And I admit it I am like that too. If you forbidd a child not to eat candy he will simply sneak around at night propably and eat it or at school or whatever. Just let your kids do whatever they want, but within limits. And if you discovered that they are browsing these sites these softwares will not help even if they are too young and don't know how to hack them. They will grow up and will know how disable them. And it will be too late to undo the damages. The best way to deal with the situation is by communicating with your child about this matter.
Posted by: RossoneriFido at October 14, 2008 10:41 PMWhile I agree that education, guidelines, limits, etc are part of the approach you still need someting to protect against the really nasty stuff on the internet.
My teenager being a teenager is pretty saavy and has managed get around numerous software packages that I have tried use to limit his online gameing.
I have also found these product fairly unrealiable and cumbersome to use and with so many hacks out there for parental control software that Im at wits end. I thought Vista might be the solution but there are even instructions on how to circumvent their built in controls. After endless google searches I recently came accross this product called netblox - www.zortlabs.com its a hardware device that claims to have parental contols and security features that protect all your computers with one subsrciption which sounds good as I have 3 here at home.
I called them up to get more details and it sounds promising. No software to install or configuration on the device either. They said its all done through a secure website. They also claim that the only way to get around their controls is to uninstall the device - and then it notifies you if that happens. Not sure that is the best solution for my teenager but my younger kids wont be able to figure that out. I have yet to purchase it - has anyone used something like this?
Posted by: booch at December 23, 2008 7:19 PMOkay people, i am a 16 year guy, i have the bsafe crap, and i dont look at that porn crap but for those people who want to, or actually want to get past their filter or anything (such as online games or even news), just download a key logger. All u have to do is download the key logger off a reliable site, set it up and hide it, get parents to type in any passwords u want to know, like the bsafe online password, yahoo password, any other etc... then look at the key log and it shows every key u have typed on the keyboard, sucessfully giving u all the users and passwords desired. If u have a crazy filter go to proxyboxonline.com and u can get past and filter, go on any site you want(its a little laggy though). So whenever u get caught u just re-keylog the computer and re-get the passwords.
I hope this Post is useful for all those typical teenagers that are deprived from their normal life by dictating, bias, communist, socialist parents, etc...(i can keep going and going).
One more thing is that, your parents actually care for u that is why they block your life, so u are not exposed to all the crap online or in the world. But, sometimes parents go a little over the top so u rebel and get away with what u want. So it doesnt matter anyway, someday u will thank your parents for how bad or good they were.
i know this post is controversial but try to get the most out of best sides.
best of luck,
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Posted by: iknowall at January 27, 2009 8:51 PMUse Application Blocker (http://www.applicationblocker.com), i am using it for my sister :)
Posted by: Marusha at May 19, 2009 6:19 AMShe can`t un-install it and she is very annoyed when she gets different messages when she tries to acces blocked sites&applications. Good luck!
I'm 16 and have Net Nanny on my home computer, and while I wouldn't really mind having monitoring software on my computer (I don't look at anything that my parents would find questionable, so what does it matter?) my problem with it is that its filters are really very poorly thought-out. First, it blocks secure content (https). While there may be people who use https sites to bypass filters, for me, it's how I secure my email. Consequently, when I use a browser other than Firefox or the dreaded IE, Net Nanny blocks my access to my email account. Which is, to say the least, annoying.
Also, I have reason to believe that whatever method they use to scan the page you're trying to access is seriously flawed. I've had sites give me a warning and when I went to look at the page, it was totally clean. Not even the ads were objectionable. I've been to my school website and had it blocked. I'm sure blocking 50% of the entire Internet is a great way to make your kids stay safe, but that's just ridiculous when you think about it.
I'm not even interested in killing the application or finding out my dad's password. I'd just really love to be able to check my email in Opera or Chrome.
Posted by: Rachel Q. at August 3, 2009 11:30 AMAs long as I have access to the beginning point and end point I can bypass any filter. I can fool web blockers by using secure proxies. I can run programs in a virtual machine away from the eyes of the spyware (and by that I mean your parental controls which act exactly like spyware does).
Posted by: demii at October 6, 2009 6:17 PM