Parental Discretion Advised

There are at least three ways to prevent your children from accessing internet web sites that you do not want them to view:

• Use your network router
• Use individual web browser parental control features, if any
• Use the Windows "hosts" file

Two additional methods include (1) installing specialized software made by McAfee, Norton/Symantec, Net Nanny, and other vendors; and (2) utilizing your ISP's parental control features, if any. These options are going to vary so much from one household to another that they are beyond the scope of this blog.

The first three methods listed above will have more general applicability, so let's tackle them one by one.

1. Your Network Router

The way to make only one change but still affects all computers without exception: block sites on your internet router.

Comcast happens to be my internet service provider (ISP), and they have provided me with an SMCWBR14S-N4 router. For those of you who share the same router, perform these steps:

1. Log on
2. Click the "Firewall" menu option at upper right
3. Click the "Content filter" menu at the far left (last entry in list)
4. Go to field "Add a URL filter" to block a url (alas: wild cards not accepted; enter "encrypted.google.com" and "www.google.com" separately, not the more generic "*.google.com")
   
   or
   Go to field "Add a Host (keyword) Filter" for specific keywords
5. Click the corresponding "Add" button(s)

The exact details will obviously vary from one router to another, but the principle will be the same: log on to your router's software, locate the content filtering section, complete the applicable fields, then save your newly-created filters.

I consider this technique to be the strongest method of the three. It prevents all all computers on the network from using any of the blocked web sites. For example, consider the case where you happen to have a favorite adult web site you like to visit from time to time [and I am speaking purely hypothetically, of course] but which you do not want your children to visit. Then too bad, so sad: neither their computers nor yours will be able to access the forbidden fruit under this method. Everyone gets shut out.

2. Web Browser Parental Control Features

Another method involves blocking websites within particular web browsers. The following steps steps apply both to Internet Explorer versions 8 and 9:

1. Open Internet Explorer
2. Click "Tools | Internet Options" menus
3. Select the "Content" tab
4. In the "Content Advisor" section, click the "Enable" button
5. Answer "Yes" in the User Account Control window to allow program changes
6. Select the "Approved Sites" tab
7. In the "Allow this website" field, add all sites that you want to block and click the "Never" button, not the "Always" button.
   
   [Note: You can block all subdomains of a website by entering *. in front of the domain. For example, if you want to block all sites of google.com, simply enter *.google.com]
8. Select the "General tab"
9. Check the option "Users can see websites that have no ratings"
10. Click on the "Create password" button to set a password to control the Content Advisor
11. Click the OK button to save changes

Firefox, unfortunately, has no intrinsic parental control features. Users must therefore rely on a variety of available add-ons for Firefox. I have read about one such add-on called BlockSite that supposedly performs what its name implies, but the reviews make it sound very problematic and troublesome. I personally have had very good success with another add-on called Procon Latte which I heartily recommend.

Opera has a built-in system similar to that of Internet Explorer:

1. Open Opera
2. Click on "Tools | Preferences..." menus
3. Select "Advanced" tab
4. Select "Content" menu from list at left
5. Click "Blocked Content..." button at very bottom
6. Clock the "Add..." button
7. Type the url you wish to block in the field indicated

The blocked urls are stored in a file in the user's profile as per the following examples:

      C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>\Application Data\Opera\Opera\urlfilter.ini   (Windows XP)

      C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\Opera\Opera\urlfilter.ini   (Windows 7)

For Google's Chrome browser, I found the following instructions on the internet but have not verified the process because I have not yet installed Chrome on any of my computers:

1. Open your Chrome Web Browser
2. Click the wrench symbol in the upper right corner.
3. Choose "Tools"
4. Click "Under the Hood" tab
5. Choose "Change Proxy Settings"
6. Click "Security" followed by "Restricted Sites"
7. Double click "Sites" and add the site you want block

The methods in Internet Explorer, Opera, and Firefox are password-protected, so if you beat your children to the punch and are the first to assign those passwords, then you should be good to go. Wouldn't it be ironic if some tech-savvy youngsters read this article and preempted the parents by assigning their own password before the parents did, thus locking the *parents* out? Fortunately, I think you must have administrative privileges to set the passwords; if you have granted your children admin privileges for whatever reason, then you have only yourself to blame.

In addition to Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer, I also have Avant Browser, Maxthon, and K-Meleon browsers installed. If I were to eventually install Google Chrome as well, that would make seven browser accounts to modify. With my two children, that translates to potentially fourteen individual browser tweaks. I personally am just not that industrious; that many changes would simply be entirely too tedious, cumbersome, and unwieldy for me. However, if parents do not lock down all installed browsers, then children can simply try one browser after another until they find one that allows them access.

For these reasons, I consider this the weakest of the three approaches under consideration.


3. Edit the Windows "hosts" file

Another way to block web sites in Windows: modify the "hosts" file (found in "C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts"). The idea of modifying "hosts" has been around since at least Windows XP, but the details are somewhat different for Windows 7.

The following steps must be taken on each applicable Windows 7 computer:

1. Open an elevated instance of Notepad or Wordpad32 (i.e., open as administrator)
2. Drill down to folder "C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\"
3. Set file type to "All Files (*.*)" to display files with no extension
4. Right click on file "hosts" and select the "Properties" menu item
5. Uncheck "Read only" attribute
6. Finish opening "hosts" and edit: for offending sites, add lines such as
   127.0.0.1   www.googles.it         and/or
   127.0.0.1   googles.it
7. Save changes with "Save As...", again setting file type to "All Files (*.*)"
8. After saving "hosts" file, reset "Read-only" attribute

[Note: Some anti-malware software such as SpyBot Search & Destroy automatically add numerous entries into the "hosts" file to block sites identified as malicious and therefore harmful. All the more reason to add such anti-malware in addition to your firewall and anti-virus software.]

I consider this approach to be the happy medium between the other two. It is nowhere near as draconian as using the router settings which block any and all computers on the network from accessing the blocked sites. Instead, I can target only the "hosts" file on my children's computers while leaving my own computer unaffected.

On the other hand, this technique is nowhere near as cumbersome as having to adjust the settings of a multitude of different web browsers for each user. Indeed, only one "hosts" file is involved that covers all users of that computer regardless of the browser(s) involved.

Of course, this last method might not be applicable if you happen to share a computer with your children because editing the "hosts" file to block web sites will affect your own account, too. If your child's computer has only one browser installed—most likely Internet Explorer—then maybe the web browser tweak option is the simplest way to go. If you do not use the computer much but other family members have one or more computers with multiple browsers, then maybe programming the network router is the best option. As with almost anything these days, you will have to choose the alternative that best suits your particular situation.

---

For further reading:

Blocking Web Sites in Windows 7

Setting Up Parental Controls (Microsoft site)

Hungry for Missing Feeds?

For reasons I have never understood, Mozilla has deleted the RSS feed icon from the URL field of the Firefox web browser. Prior to version 4 of Firefox, this RSS icon appeared in the address/URL field whenever the site had RSS feed capabilities. Users had only to click on the icon to subscribe to RSS feeds from that site. On the other hand, the icon was altogether absent if the site had no such RSS capability. In short, this method provided a very quick, definitive, and convenient visual cue.

Alas: that useful feature is no more. Beginning with the release of Firefox version 4 on 22 March 2011, there is no longer any visual cue whatsoever because there is no longer any RSS icon at all.

Or is there? Yes, in fact, there is: it is just well hidden. To display it, simply click on "View | Toolbars | Customize..." menus and find the "Subscribe" button with the RSS icon. Simply drag the button to the toolbar of your choice.

Voilà! Unlike before, the RSS logo will always be present. Now, however, the "Subscribe" button becomes an active link with bold black print in the presence of an RSS feed site. Conversely, the button becomes an inactive link with faded gray print in the absence of an RSS feed. Not quite as prominent a visual cue as the original, but it will suffice; it is certainly better than nothing.

It still irks me that users must discover this solution on their own and then implement it. This is especially puzzling in light of the fact that Mozilla's own SeaMonkey browser still retains the original feature of the RSS icon in the URL field. It took me over a year before I stumbled upon the new Firefox alternative, and then thanks only to this helpful web site.

I did personally reap an immediate benefit from this discovery. It so happens that in order to view the RSS icon on my local school district's web site, Firefox users must:

• allow font@http://themes.googleusercontent.com (based on JavaScript)     *AND*
• allow system colors     *AND*
• allow images

By default, I have all three of those features disabled in Firefox. I disable JavaScript as a security measure; I apply my own soothing color scheme to avoid migraine headaches caused by the garishly bright color schemes present on most web sites; and I disable images to avoid an avalanche of unwanted advertisement eyesores.

As a result, I never saw the RSS icon on my school district's quirky web site and was therefore completely unaware that the site even had RSS capability — that is, until I installed the "Subscribe" button on my "Bookmarks Toolbar" in the manner described above. Lo and behold: the bold black "Subscribe" link drew my attention and alerted me to the presence of RSS.

Yippie kay yay! My hunger for RSS feeds is once again satiated.