Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
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?
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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.
Article C2752 - August 11, 2006 « »
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
October 4, 2011 5:44 PM
To the computer savvy teenagers with bloated egos and disrespectful attitudes. As inadequate and old fashioned as your parents may they seem, it's only thanks to them and their hard work that you can eat, sleep, and have a place to live in.
Parents may not know the best way to make of you the best human being they dreamed of, but they try and instinctively look for ways to keep the crap of this world out of your brains.
Yet, you're defiant and think you're all that because you know your way around computers and can't be stopped ..... from filling your mind with CRAP.
I pity you, you don't know it, but you're losing out.
December 4, 2011 7:14 AM
(I'm not a teenager.)
Don't use it. Out of curiosity, I've done some research and apparently it blocks fairly innocent things, such as msn and tvtropes. It will only cause frustration. Isn't there some sort of porn filter you can use instead? Also, what the writer of the article said about trust is correct.
March 15, 2012 7:27 AM
It's a modern-day rite of passage; much as we wouldn't like our teens to look at p0rn, they do.
I'm 25, and my only real access to porn was via trading mags in uni with friends [physical format] - you can't avoid it intoday's society.
Better to realize that when they're 18+ it's a moot point as to monitor their usage.
October 12, 2012 9:37 AM
Plain and simple. I'm an IT Information Assurance Specalist and my kid will NEVER break my parental controls. Shame for her...
10 Steps to secure a PC from your Kids...
1. Get Squid Proxy Server.
2. Install Squid on your OWN PC.
3. Bridge your kids network connection from her PC to your Own PC. Sometimes this can be complicated, depending on your home network setup. You could always put Squid Proxy on another PC on the network LAN and configure your router to forward requests from your Kids PC to Squid before leaving the network.
4. Setup a whitelist (a whitelist is a DENY ALL except SITE list...contrary to a blacklist which is ACCEPT ALL deny SITE) on the Squid Proxy server.
5. Setup Remote logging service on the kids PC and have it save logs on your PC. I believe (but I could be wrong) that Windows 7 has this built in but you can also google some free software to do it as well.
6. Disable the Administrator and Guest account on your kids PC. Make a new Administrator account with a discreet name like "Testing" or "Service".
7. Install Antivirus on the PC to prevent keyloggers and other trojans.
8. Install "DeepFreeze" on the kids PC after it's all setup. This freezes configuration of the PC (like at Internet Cafe's that let you do anything on it) so that when you reboot it, everything is erased (except for say, your kids documents folder) and restored to the original configuration. This will frustrate your kids beyond comprehension because everytime they change something, they'll have to change it again upon reboot.
9. Setup a scheduling service to reboot the PC at 3am every night. This is to keep the PC constantly refreshed so any changes your sneaky kids do are undone.
10. Monitor your kids randomly when using it. Kids are devious and even this isn't FULL PROOF but it's damn close.
January 1, 2013 12:55 PM
No, kids can't get around anything. First, I'm a former IBM-er and did grad work in Computer Science (among other topics). Kids can use proxy servers like through peacefire, etc. But simply setting up and updating a bios password keeps them off the computer. Or just taking away the modem works, too.
I simply don't allow them to have computer time. If they go to sites I disallow, I'll see it. Then I tell them they can go to the library to use the computer. I also confiscate cell phones. Social life means actually MEETING people, not Facebook.
Plato seemed to have gotten through his works without a computer. "Google" (which spies on you) is no replacement for what's on a library shelf.
Teachers who insist that kids "need" to have computer access are preaching a lot of garbage. Abraham Lincoln walked five miles in the snow to the library.. and was arguably more articulate than any politician or president alive today.