Do you really have an idea of what people, young and old, get up to whilst on the Internet? Over the last few years of working with home and business users I've seen rather a lot of interesting sites on the users PCs; there has been the "professional" who had a hankering for pictures of men dressed like the Les Dawson character Ada, the employee who spent his time pretending to be a woman on dodgy / swinging websites, and a colleagues 13 year old son's PC that was full of same sex images, to mention only a few, I've seen quite a selection. And no, I will never tell you who they were!
Thankfully for those who do search for the usual, and sometimes the slightly unusual, are many applications to help protect you from unscrupulous websites, emails etc. Protection software such as anti-virus, spy-ware and firewall tools can help prevent the user from downloading nasty little programs that can compromise your systems. But how ever hard the protection software tries to protect you, the hackers, or more likely now days the fraudster, is one step ahead.
For those who want to control what others get up to on their computers you can always put software in place to check each website your employee/family member visits; if it is on the "black list", which are predominately made up of sex, gambling, hacking and social networking websites, the software stops their request and shows a warning message accordingly. Well those who don't know how to get round it get a message!
I feel I am quite an open minded person and respect people as individuals and therefore I'm rarely surprised by what I find. But, what I do know is that you can not underestimate the lengths some people go to when wanting access to their desired places in the Internet or covering their tracks; the one thing that's the biggest tell tale sign (and I double checked this with a few of my IT colleagues) is no signs of Internet activity what so ever... Why would you need to clean the Internet history if you have been open and honest??
When you consider your aptitude with the computer you should also consider the aptitude of your staff/family. In most cases the younger generations have far more information available to them than you can imagine. Using Google for less than 30 seconds I came across the following solution for the average surfer Click Here. In essence its a link to a "Proxy" website. If you don't listen to the YouTube video I shall explain; When you browse the Internet your computer can monitor the websites you visit and restrict you accordingly (see above). If however you go to a website that looks, for all intents and purposes, as if it has just a picture on it, then the control software generally lets it right through. Now if that picture was say interactive, as in it acted as if it was itself a website browser, some people might find it useful to use this as stepping stone to their favourite places on the net.
What this means to you and me is that there is a way of getting round expensive protection software. It leaves no trace of where they have been, and you have no control over where they go and what they get up to!
You know what its like when you are looking for a surprise for your loved one, if you are like me and like to use the Internet for purchasing items I know I will find a quiet place to take my laptop, the bedroom, bathroom, out in the shed and find that desired item. The same goes with kids, when they want to chat privately; its now normal for them to hide in their bedrooms, shut & possibly lock the door. How many times have you walked in on someone to see a frantic movement of the mouse and the screen changes dramatically from one image to something completely inane? We can only imagine what they are getting up to, conversations about kids at school, forums discussing how dreadful parents are for not letting them do this, that or the other, but sometimes it gets more involved. What I have found disturbing is when I come across images from web cams or pictures that that quite frankly should not be on their computers. I will let your mind consider that for a moment....
I appreciate we all need space, and the ability to express ourselves, but a level of control is also needed to protect our less than wise loved ones. When your kids have their respective "loving" partners over, are you happy for them to share a bed at the age of say 13/14? Maybe the person they are chatting to is not physically there with them but with webcam technology, they might as well be... And yes they can be quite explicit.
So whats the answer?
You have a number of options, software that you put on the PC to prevent your kids/partner having access to these sites, chats, etc. but as I've explained that's not always as useful as you might think, you could ban them from using the computer but we all know that their academic research relies on this technology, so you could just tell them not to visit these sites, and yes, of course that will work while you are watching... simplest solution is to watch then. Not all the time but put them in a public space in the home where they have to be sensible.
Below is a picture of a coffee bar a kind friend sent me after we talked about this subject. She has three kids who all spend a lot of time on the Internet and she found herself in the same situation as I've described. So rather than making an issue out of it she had someone build this in their kitchen. Perfect solution from my point of view. Its somewhere that the kids or adults can sit comfortably, have space for homework books, but most importantly it does not give them the opportunity to explore the areas of the net we just don't want them to be going to!
So in short, if you want to protect your loved ones from Internet abuse, make it simple, make sure the PC is in a family area, and NOT in the bedroom. You have been warned.
