# Young kids just got their first computers .. need help locking down



## copenhagen69 (Jun 22, 2022)

So I finally gave in and let the kids have their own computers ... with teaching done 100% out of the portal for their assignments it only made sense.

However, now I need to lock that S**** down haha. Where should I start looking/researching for best ways to filter/block all the bad stuff.

Thoughts on how to help stop them from clicking on potentially bad website ads and all that too?


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## cvaldes (Jun 22, 2022)

Disclaimer: I do not have children.

I'll offer a few observations.

The first is that Microsoft probably has some sort of parents' guide on restricting Windows features on PCs. For sure there are sites that advise parents how to increase protection for children for a variety of computer using situations.

There are plenty of third-party solutions. I can't vouch for their effectiveness but these services are periodically reviewed.

For example, Tom's Guides gives the venerable Net Nanny subscription service an Editor's Choice award. Net Nanny is one of the earliest content control suites tracing its lineage back almost 30 years.

However, there are two larger issues/opinions.

Children should be supervised by parents while using computers. You may think you are more clever than your kids but you should be prepared for possibility that one day they will prove you wrong. It's the same issue with videogame consoles, smartphones, etc. There is a ton of online activity that's inappropriate for children.

The other main issue is that your children will likely be able to bypass some of your restrictions when they are visiting friends whose parents are less strict or less technically savvy. This is not a new concept. Many decades ago I watched television at neighbors' houses and eventually my parents caved in and bought a television set but viewing time was both limited and supervised.

If a parent says, "Don't do ____" some kids will think "Gee, maybe I should try doing ____." I won't make any assumptions what side of the fence your kids are on. Basically their respect for your authority should be first line of defense. If that defense is porous or flimsy, I'm not convinced that any amount of technology is going to provide ample protection.

But the first step is for you to know what's on the screen. Put the new computer in the family room or living room and make sure there's at least one adult with an eye out on what's happening on the screen.

There's no way for any of us here to assess how much trust you place in your children and how much esteem you hold in their ability to make sound judgments on proper use of the Internet. All I know is that many teenagers have not fully developed nuanced decision making skills and often make poor choices.

Best of luck.


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## Lew Zealand (Jun 22, 2022)

If the computers are in a public area of the house, you may not need to do anything.  We made a point of not making anything physically off limits for our kids, instead explaining the dangers of things and of course making sure the bleach, etc. is in a reasonably secure area.  They probably only ate a few tide pods, tho, they'll recover (j/k).  Our kids gaming PCs are in the main room in the house, and thus are always visible not only to the parents but also to them as well.  We taught them not just to click on anything but yes, in the first 3 months of having them, Chrome got bogged down in malware but Firefox never had that problem.  Cleared Chrome and since then have had a rare search engine hijack but nothing worse.

Basically we want to give them the sense of responsibility and if there's a breach of it, then we will discuss remediation.  ~4.5 years so far and practically nothing of note to report after those first 3 months.


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## mouacyk (Jun 22, 2022)

Lew Zealand said:


> If the computers are in a public area of the house, you may not need to do anything.  We made a point of not making anything physically off limits for our kids, instead explaining the dangers of things and of course making sure the bleach, etc. is in a reasonably secure area.  They probably only ate a few tide pods, tho, they'll recover (j/k).  Our kids gaming PCs are in the main room in the house, and thus are always visible not only to the parents but also to them as well.  We taught them not just to click on anything but yes, in the first 3 months of having them, Chrome got bogged down in malware but Firefox never had that problem.  Cleared Chrome and since then have had a rare search engine hijack but nothing worse.
> 
> Basically we want to give them the sense of responsibility and if there's a breach of it, then we will discuss remediation.  ~4.5 years so far and practically nothing of note to report after those first 3 months.


Reads like you never leave your kids alone. What a commitment.


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## brutalame (Jun 22, 2022)

You can change the DNS for something safer for children like : https://adguard-dns.io/en/welcome.html


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## GerKNG (Jun 22, 2022)

Beside Software a good secondary protection would be the cloudflare DNS that automatically blocks adult sites and similar stuff:
my brother uses it for his kids and it works pretty well so far.








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## The red spirit (Jun 22, 2022)

Just let them watch porn. Bobs and veganas never harmed anyone.


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## 1freedude (Jun 22, 2022)

I am a bit lucky.  My son uses a school administered chromebook.  But, youtube is allowed and used for classwork.  That is a slippery slope.  Outside of school hours, my router is the firewall to stop YT.  I set up parental schedules based on time of day for a particular device.  The nintendo switch gets no internet during school.

A different approach...I have also used kiosk mode for my youngest.  That was in use on an elo AIO.  Think drawing and simple coloring apps.









						Kiosk Mode
					

Learn about Kiosk Mode in Windows IoT Enterprise.



					docs.microsoft.com
				




My son is 11, daughter is 5.  If they want to crack out on YT, they do it on the family TV.


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## ThrashZone (Jun 22, 2022)

Hi,
Upgrade the os to 10 or 11 pro so you can use group policy too !

Add a real password to the default admin account
Add your admin account and don't give them the password of either.

Add them as a standard user account
Do everything via host file there are plenty of good host files like mvp host file/ crypo host files/...

Let them learn through hard knocks after that
Standard accounts can only do so much.

Make plenty of system images


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## cvaldes (Jun 22, 2022)

1freedude said:


> I am a bit lucky.  My son uses a school administered chromebook.  But, youtube is allowed and used for classwork.  That is a slippery slope.  Outside of school hours, my router is the firewall to stop YT.  I set up parental schedules based on time of day for a particular device.
> 
> ...
> 
> My son is 11, daughter is 5.  If they want to crack out on YT, they do it on the family TV.


This is a good example of why young kids Internet usage needs to be supervised.

Many sites have a mixture of content, some of which is kid-friendly, some of which is really adult-oriented.

All of the social networking services are like this. So even if Instagram forbids nudity, there's plenty of adult behavior there. Let's remember that some children have body image issues due to incessant and often unrealistic portrayals of physical beauty and what's acceptable or even desirable as behavior.

No family oriented DNS server is going to prevent Instagram from hosting reels of college kids at spring break.


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## mplayerMuPDF (Jun 22, 2022)

Honestly, if they are young, IMHO (but I am not a parent), a whitelist is the best option. There is no other way to stop stuff from slipping through the cracks. I would keep them far away from social media personally as well. Other than whitelisted sites, there is plenty of fun and educational stuff that they can do offline on a computer (unless it is a Chromebook/box perhaps...).


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## Lew Zealand (Jun 22, 2022)

mouacyk said:


> Reads like you never leave your kids alone. What a commitment.



Nope.  The PCs are in a common area and we have a small house.  You're rarely a few steps from the (relatively, lol) large central room where the PCs are, so any "monitoring" takes care of itself.


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## Bones (Jun 22, 2022)

copenhagen69 said:


> So I finally gave in and let the kids have their own computers ... with teaching done 100% out of the portal for their assignments it only made sense.
> 
> *However, now I need to lock that S**** down haha*. Where should I start looking/researching for best ways to filter/block all the bad stuff.
> 
> Thoughts on how to help stop them from clicking on potentially bad website ads and all that too?


Maybe getting the power outlet the PC/router is running from on a separate breaker and locking the breaker box?
Just a thought.


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## Frick (Jun 22, 2022)

OpenDNS lets you do very specific filtering.

And +1 on having the computers in shared rooms/supervision, and more importantly age appropriate education on the dangers of the internet. Very important if they're playing Roblox or any other game with social elements.


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## Blaeza (Jun 22, 2022)

They'll be on here asking how to bypass whatever you setup...


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## Chomiq (Jun 22, 2022)

Adblock on browser and filter everything through DNS.


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## SpittinFax (Jun 22, 2022)

Back in the 2000's the parental controls we had were very regressive. 90% of the time they would just lock sites because of random stuff and you couldn't even tell what triggered it.

Honestly coming from myself as a kid who went through all this, the best thing you can do is keep the computer in a public area. Even better, install traffic logging software to keep track of what websites are being loaded and what search terms are being used. That way things aren't locked down with passwords but it's still hard for kids to view shady stuff and it goes unnoticed, even if browser history is wiped.


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## 1freedude (Jun 22, 2022)

Frick said:


> ... Very important if they're playing Roblox or any other game with social elements.


We shutdown Roblox a long time ago.  Fortnite is only social he can use, and we monitor friends that we can call the parents.


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## 64K (Jun 22, 2022)

Blaeza said:


> They'll be on here asking how to bypass whatever you setup...



Probably some of their friends already know how to bypass parental controls and share the info.

It seems to me that the internet is flooded with porn. Even Youtube has porn on it. Amazingly there is a nude scene with Brooke Shields when she was 11 on Youtube. How this didn't get banned by Youtube is beyond me.


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## P4-630 (Jun 22, 2022)

How to Block Websites via Hosts file in Windows 11
					

In this comprehensive tutorial, we will show you the detailed steps to block websites via the Hosts file on your Windows 11 PC.




					www.droidwin.com
				




The location of hosts file is the same in earlier windows versions.


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## ratirt (Jun 22, 2022)

Lock all inappropriate content. Kids are supposed to be kids. All adult stuff will come eventually no matter what. 
Switch/router with blocked sites and/or specific content.


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## neatfeatguy (Jun 22, 2022)

I actually miss the simplicity of Parental Controls on Windows 7. Windows 10 MS shifted allowing control of Parental Controls from being setup directly on the device in question to needing to be tied to MS server and handled through their end.

I tried linking one of the kid's laptops to my MS account so I could configure parental controls and the shit just won't work. It's been a fucking headache trying to get it to sync up and if it was working and I need to change something, I can't just hop on the device in question and make changes. I have to log into my MS account, adjust parental control settings, save the changes and if the device in question isn't online, it won't get the changes you made.....what a stupid fucking direction MS took parental controls.

I had to resort to site blocking plugins on chrome. I had to go out of my way to remove edge from the computer. My son was upset that youtube was blocked on the computer, but he got over it as he played his minecraft or roblox on it....also having UAC enabled keeps him from installing anything without my permission. I just wish parental controls wasn't screwed up by MS. I had zero issues using it with Windows 7 when my daughter was younger and she wanted to use my computer....I'd just log into the account I setup for her and I could make parental control changes on the fly by just logging into my account on the computer and making adjustments for her account on it.


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## bonehead123 (Jun 22, 2022)

Block it, lock it, dock it.....

This is what I did when my kids were young, using a combination of software & hardware tools, router controls, whitelisting, and remote controlled power outlets in their rooms...

And I did the same to their 1st cellphones, but that was a bit less effective, cause if they hadn't seen it before then, they would find a way to find whatever they wanted to see anyways....


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## ThrashZone (Jun 22, 2022)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Add a real password to the default admin account
> Add your admin account and don't give them the password of either.
> 
> ...


Hi,
Forgot to add upgrade the os to 10 or 11 pro so you can also use group policy for other controls.


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## eidairaman1 (Jun 22, 2022)

ratirt said:


> Lock all inappropriate content. Kids are supposed to be kids. All adult stuff will come eventually no matter what.
> Switch/router with blocked sites and/or specific content.


Gpedit.msc, regedit to disable downloading of webbrowsers, yse a kids only browser


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## QuietBob (Jun 22, 2022)

You could start by configuring the web browser on the kids' PCs for high security. Make sure to disable all options related to privacy (tracking, permissions to access user location, camera, etc.). Set Google in Safe Search mode as default engine. Do not save any personal information on their computers, such as your own logins, passwords, credit card numbers.

I don't know how old your kids are, but naturally they'll want to play multiplayer games. Roblox lets you create an "under 13" account where the parent can restrict their child's interactions online. Fortnite has a PIN-secured in-game menu with similar options. Unfortunately, there are some toxic people in these communities, so disabling voice communications and text chat may be a good idea initially.

But still, I'd be far more concerned about the content your kids have access to when using their cell phone. This is how teenagers interact these days first and foremost. And you cannot always supervise them when they're on their phone. As has been mentioned, no amount of restrictions can replace an honest but unprovoked conversation. Educating kids about online threats is maybe one of the biggest challenges of parenting today.


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## ThrashZone (Jun 22, 2022)

eidairaman1 said:


> Gpedit.msc, regedit to disable downloading of webbrowsers, yse a kids only browser


Hi,
Yep many people first mistake is not caughing up extra $ for pro and using group policy.

And no pro is not expensive tpu post deals every month it seems








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## ERazer (Jun 22, 2022)

I use my Microsoft account, I set the age for safe content browsing of course they have to use Edge and I blocked any other browser being installed, I set the time when they can use the computer or completely block it if they are grounded, it will notify me if they want to install any software (games) i can approve or deny.











I also use pi-hole extra content filtering


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## copenhagen69 (Jun 22, 2022)

ERazer said:


> I use my Microsoft account, I set the age for safe content browsing of course they have to use Edge and I blocked any other browser being installed, I set the time when they can use the computer or completely block it if they are grounded, it will notify me if they want to install any software (games) i can approve or deny.
> View attachment 251994
> View attachment 251996
> View attachment 252000
> ...


well that looks easy enough ... what feature is that in Msoft? I dont really use anything Msoft besides their OS, never got over the windows Vista debacle lol


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## R0H1T (Jun 22, 2022)

You generally can't bypass parental restrictions through AV. Not unless the kids end up setting another admin account/have access to AV password.


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## ERazer (Jun 22, 2022)

copenhagen69 said:


> well that looks easy enough ... what feature is that in Msoft? I dont really use anything Msoft besides their OS, never got over the windows Vista debacle lol


just google Microsoft family (not paid), we all hate on MS for all telemetry and bs but for tracking my kid's online activity its been a blessing as a parent. I recommend it for non tech parents. Oh if you have xbox you can manage it too.


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## ThrashZone (Jun 22, 2022)

Hi,
Worst thing about MS is not the telemetry it's MSN/... and all that crap


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## ERazer (Jun 22, 2022)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Worst thing about MS is not the telemetry it's MSN/... and all that crap


pi-hole with unbound my friend, well for my kid he uses a different pi-hole (vm) w/o unbound MS need those telemetry to track his activity.


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## ThrashZone (Jun 22, 2022)

ERazer said:


> pi-hole with unbound my friend, well for my kid he uses a different pi-hole (vm) w/o unbound MS need those telemetry to track his activity.


Hi,
Cripes are you speaking English


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## copenhagen69 (Jun 22, 2022)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Yep many people first mistake is not caughing up extra $ for pro and using group policy.
> 
> And no pro is not expensive tpu post deals every month it seems
> ...


thanks for that .. looks like I will be shopping there soon


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## johnspack (Jun 22, 2022)

How about custom router firmware that allows you to set up the rules from the router.  Then it won't matter what device they use,  they will be blocked.


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## ThrashZone (Jun 22, 2022)

copenhagen69 said:


> thanks for that .. looks like I will be shopping there soon


Hi,
Pay close attention to the install process 
Their email support is pretty quick and helpful if you have any issues activating.


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## ratirt (Jun 23, 2022)

eidairaman1 said:


> Gpedit.msc, regedit to disable downloading of webbrowsers, yse a kids only browser


Well, kids are smart and they might figure out how to workaround it


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## P4-630 (Jun 23, 2022)

Just block all sites you want with the windows hosts file....


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## Bomby569 (Jun 23, 2022)

just saying the DNS thing is a bad idea, you can't imagine how quick those little things learn  

What they can't figure out from themselves they have lots of friends with similar problems


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## eidairaman1 (Jun 27, 2022)

QuietBob said:


> You could start by configuring the web browser on the kids' PCs for high security. Make sure to disable all options related to privacy (tracking, permissions to access user location, camera, etc.). Set Google in Safe Search mode as default engine. Do not save any personal information on their computers, such as your own logins, passwords, credit card numbers.
> 
> I don't know how old your kids are, but naturally they'll want to play multiplayer games. Roblox lets you create an "under 13" account where the parent can restrict their child's interactions online. Fortnite has a PIN-secured in-game menu with similar options. Unfortunately, there are some toxic people in these communities, so disabling voice communications and text chat may be a good idea initially.
> 
> But still, I'd be far more concerned about the content your kids have access to when using their cell phone. This is how teenagers interact these days first and foremost. And you cannot always supervise them when they're on their phone. As has been mentioned, no amount of restrictions can replace an honest but unprovoked conversation. Educating kids about online threats is maybe one of the biggest challenges of parenting today.


Id use duckduck go



ratirt said:


> Well, kids are smart and they might figure out how to workaround it


Hence gpedit. Msc/regedit and a kid guard, even block the router at certain times of day


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## caroline! (Jun 28, 2022)

Install Linux, instantly prevents the computer from running any game, also set up a limited user account so they can't install/uninstall software, it does allow them to manage user files like idk their homework or school essays, and no, LibreOffice isn't terrible.

If you want to lock XXX websites you could set up a PiHole which is what I do not because I have kids but to prevent google and social media crawlers from pinging my PC whenever a website is loaded. You can build it out of junk parts you might have, mine is a P4 with 2 PCI interfaces, nothing fancy but does the job, if your network is big though you'll need more RAM and faster cores.



1freedude said:


> We shutdown Roblox a long time ago.  Fortnite is only social he can use, and we monitor friends that we can call the parents.


Fortnite? poor kids, show them some real games you monster! /s



64K said:


> Probably some of their friends already know how to bypass parental controls and share the info.
> 
> It seems to me that the internet is flooded with porn. Even Youtube has porn on it. Amazingly there is a nude scene with Brooke Shields when she was 11 on Youtube. How this didn't get banned by Youtube is beyond me.


Porn is like 60% of all internet traffic so yeah. No idea who Brooke Shields is but you know who's behind YouTube and what agenda they're pushing.



Bones said:


> Maybe getting the power outlet the PC/router is running from on a separate breaker and locking the breaker box?
> Just a thought.


I powered my PC using a pair of wires coming out of a radio when my parents took away the PSU cord. The radio had the plug but also room to fit 3 big D-size batteries so I concealed the cable in there to avoid _being_ _sus_, had a cheap plug cover to avoid creating a short with the paperclips that went into the PSU as well.






Imagine what kids nowadays could come up with.


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