Are you Safe?

So this weekend my pastor did a great sermon on the dangers of Pornography. He used a crazy percentage that most of the pornography that comes into homes is from the internet. Unfortunately I am intimately familiar with this issue. However, fortunately I have come up with some pretty good protection solutions.

First off, there are a lot of options to choose from. The ones that I have listed here is not an exhaustive list. It is just what I’ve tried. My current setup is the best so far. The reason for that is cost, protection level, and minimum impact on my computer system (meaning it doesn’t break anything or slow me down). The trade off might be the learning curve. But all of the systems I use are fairly easy. The services I use have really good instructions and are easy to follow and the applications do exactly what they say they are going to do.

Web Filters :

For my web filter, I use K9 Web Protection. You can find it here: http://www1.k9webprotection.com/index.php This filter is FREE and it protects against a lot of sites. In fact many of the sites that you visit could be in a blocking category. However, it is pretty easy to unblock them (from the password protected control panel). This filter does all the basics (general category blocking, URL blocking, Keyword blocking, Time Restrictions, and Internet logging). It is a really good filter for being free. I found that the interface is easy to use, but I am not a novice when dealing with Web Filters. With a little patience you will be able to figure out how to protect your computer. Another benefit to using this software, is that it is virtually transparent. Meaning it doesn’t slow down your machine or break anything. You know that it is running when it brings up the blocked page. Other then that you won’t even know it is there.

With any free product there will be a certain amount of limitations. One of those limitations is that if you have multiple machines in your home. You will need to download the program and install it on all of the machines in your home. This means that your spouse or your accountability partner will also need to help you setup these machines. This is not too big of an issue. It is more of a convenience factor. Another potential issue (but I have not run into it yet) is the potential lack of support. Since the company makes no money on this, it is hard to employ a full time staff to support and enhance it. Like I said I have installed this product and it has worked great from the get go.

OpenDNS - Advanced option:

Since I have been using web filters for about 2 years now I have found out that as soon as a web filter technology is released the the powers that want to get around those filters also release technology to subvert the filters… This is important to know, because when there is a will there is a way to figure out how to get around filters (both paid and free). Well in my travels that lead me to K9, one of the users in the support forums also lead me to another free service called OpenDNS. Now I will admit, I know very little about how this application works. But basically you input OpenDNS IP addresses into your router control panel and then you are pretty much set. You only have to do this on your home network and all of your machines benefit from this service. You can find out more about this service here at: http://www.opendns.com/. I can tell you from experience that combined with the K9 web filter and OpenDNS that my machines are virtually safe (for now). OpenDNS also has a web dashboard (that is also password secured) that allows you to block categories as well.

Now some of you may be asking, “what about privacy?”. I can tell you this… If you are viewing pornography online, then you are more susceptible to hacking and private data being stolen from you then a company that is trying to block those types of sites. You can not only block Adult sits but phishing and hacking sites as well (as well as many more).

The above options may seem like a pain, but if you are blocking your computers because of your desire to be right with God then these steps are worth while. Even if you are just trying to protect your kids from viewing porn or just want better control of what your family is allowed to see, these steps are easy to figure out and in the end it is worth it.

Like I said there are many options available. I used another paid web filter for about 2 years and it worked fairly well. However, my machine had issues running it and it didn’t work all the time. There are other free ones that are very simple but they just log and e-mail (no blocking). So it is really a matter of what is needed in your home.

Feel free to contact me with any questions.

God Bless.

Jeff
http://www.godsurfer.com/