I would like for Comodo to produce a reliable (as all their software is) parental filter that would allow my daughter to surf the net but no to access chat rooms or IM.
I am 100% impressed with the Comodo firewall and think that it is far better than the Norton firewall that I used to use (Norton being very expensive and defaulting to allowing just about everything instead of defaulting to secure!).
So please bring out something that allows me to chose where my daughter goes on the net and is as impressive as your other products.
it’s a parents prerogative to protect both children and private information re the family. (:CLP)
Life has rules – it’s just easier to adapt that to swim uphill (:AGY)
If the private information is all you can use as an argument, then I pity you. It’s your job also to teach your daughter not to tell anyone your address under any circumstances whatsoever and to immediately block someone if they’re doing something they find uncomfortable. Not to make her wear rose-tinted glasses.
fyi: many routers have KEY WORD FILTERS which forbit URLs containing them.
PFs will never be 100% effective no matter where/how they are implemented, BUT …
the more the merrier
this is a non-trivial problem, eg: picture content can not be filtered and objectionable wordings
can always be with gifs et al. The URL can be clean, no headers or suspecious text and yet
it’s ■■■■■ everywhere.
why should any parent have to endure their kids being a victim of Content that they are not yet ready to consume? Would you let your kids(don’t forget kids go online as early as 4yrs old!) see pornographic pictures? Or some of them seeing other nasty content that they are not ready to digest? Why would you choose to subject them to this just because its there?
You misunderstand - I have nothing against a pornographic/violence filter, as long as it’s called that and does nothing else. I’ve clicked on quite a few advertisements that offered something like a “Free XBOX360” and redirected to FunWithChocolate.
(:LGH)
I’m against parental filters that allow the filtering of things like chat rooms, games, music sites, chat rooms, blogs, etc., filtering everything essentially but drmath.com. I’m not against protecting your 4-year-old from “Saphira Erotica”. I’m only against up-tight parents shielding their children’s eyes from the real world. They’re going to have to learn about life sometime, better now then later and having them being eaten alive by life because they think everything is fair. I have nothing against filtering porn. Remember, though, two recent surveys revealed that over 40% of people had sex at the age of 14-15, and over 90% of kids with parental control on their computer easily bypassed it using means like alternative browsers, Tor, etc. I’m sure that Comodo, being as great as you are, will find a means to block ALL porn/violence regardless of browser or other variables. Just, hopefully, not blogs. ;D
Your opinion does matter, but equally so does everyone else’s, even those who want a parental filter.
It may be easy to say “It’s your job also to teach your daughter not to tell anyone your address under any circumstances whatsoever and to immediately block someone if they’re doing something they find uncomfortable. Not to make her wear rose-tinted glasses.” but parents can only control children so far.
The old saying “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink” is applicable to kids and the internet - sort of like a wet paint sign. They will eventually want to find out why they can’t look at certain sites - it’s an inevitable part of growing up and learning about the ■■■■■ (so called real world). All parents wants to trust their kids, but I don’t know of very many that will place the same level of trust in the remainder of the internet (or pretty much anything outside the confines of their own homes for that matter).
If we allow kids to have open access to everything the internet has to offer, we then have two uncontrolled elements - our connection outbound and incoming data. With a parental control, at least, we can maintain some degree of control at one end - the important end - the end with the kids on it.
Besides, isn’t a firewall a control mechanism?
Cheers,
Ewen
P.S> This was being written while you were posting your latest reply.
I agree with you that pornographic/violent sites should be blocked, yet you apparently can see no harm in chat rooms?
If you want I can give you stats from recent investigations (run over the past four years) that clearly show the escalating links between chatroom interaction and real world abuse. They are not some pie in the sky set of stats. They are not something dreamed up by ultra-conservatives. They are not something I pulled off the web.
The main thing to remember is that ultimately, they’re not stats, they are kids and deserve our protection.
My own personal opinion ( and I would like to stress that it is just that - my opinion) there may be rose coloured glasses being used, but I’m not of the same opinion as you as to who is wearing them.
The next release of CFP will have password protection on the firewalls configuration. Using this, you could set up Application monitor rules to block the chat and instant messaging applications. You should also set up an account for your children that is not an adminstrator account and ensure that they use this account and not any other adminstrator equivalent account to access the internet.
I Think the ideal Parental filter it 1 that does not block out all these sites but allows you to chose to say you put in the word PORN in a block list and every website containing the word PORN was filtered get the idea?
I had a parental filter before but it was blocking out sites that children would never even know what the word means let alone what you do (its not porn by the way)
I didn’t explain myself very clearly, I apologize.
I meant allow your children to talk in chatrooms, but only reliable ones. It would be impossible to create a safelist of every single good chatroom on the internet, but it could have some sort of advanced keyword intelligence. Instead of blocking “Chat”, it could block numerous keywords that would be in a shady chat like “let’s meet”. Not blocking your child from chatting on some tech support forum.
Hm… let me think of a few abuse keywords…
CHAT
GAMES
MUSIC
IM
LOVE - (could just be an internet joke, a poem, a keyword, a story…)
Why not just add
FUN
and get it over with?
As for the comment about not knowing what the word means, see post on last page with statistics. If they don’t get it from the internet, they’ll get it from school.
