How Parents Can Block Certain Websites from Children at Home
[For non-techie parents who have a computer at home and are worried about their kids safety online.]
A mother recently wrote saying she is very concerned that her young children are spending too much time on websites like Orkut, MySpace and Facebook.
Her worries are not just about children wasting time on the Internet - it’s more about the activities that children are doing on these sites. She is concerned that children could be interacting with complete strangers (or online predators) and even sharing personal information.
And with some news reports saying that criminal activities could have been planned on Orkut, the mother has finally made up her mind to restrict access to Orkut and some other websites on the home computer.
The only problem is that she has absolutely no clue about how to block websites – parental control software like Net Nanny or Norton Internet Security are pretty good but they cost money.
Now before you take this extreme step of blocking website (that is very likely to be opposed by children), try a few things:
- Educate your children about the dangers of sharing information online with strangers. Family members should talk in detail about privacy and the web.
- Place the computer in the living area of your home from where you can easily see the screen so you’ll have some idea about activities that children are doing on the computer including the websites they are visiting frequently.
- Orkut is an open social network – that means you can easily see who’s in the friends’ list of your children and what kind of text notes (or scraps) are they exchanging with each.
Finally, to block websites on your home computer without investing in expensive software, here’s the trick (for Windows PCs):
Step 1: Click the Start button and select Run. Now type the following text in that Run box:
notepad c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Step 2: You will see a new notepad window on your screen containing some cryptic information. Don’t panic. Just goto the last line of the file, hit the enter key and type the following:
127.0.0.1 orkut.com
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 myspace.com
Save the file and exit. That’s it. None of the above sites will now open on your computer.
You can block as many websites as you like with the above technique. If you want to remove the ban later, open the same file as mentioned in Step 1 and delete the above lines.
Pretty simple but remember, our children are also very smart. And there are some popular ways to unblock websites.
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This actually is not even something that will work. It will work for the domain name, but not for the web site name (with http://www. in front of it), for example. It also is trivially easy to circumvent, even if you have your children run as a non-administrator on the computer system.
If you really want to block sites, then you need to do it on the level of the Internet connect, *not* on the PC that you want to block the site. Remember that anything on a local PC is vulnerable to access by people physically, which means it is trivial to break. It’s best not to promote false senses of security!
It is really great post for Parents.
Amit, Internet helps to improve kids and can destroy their life. We know that People used to visit worst sites than Good sites. They always waste their valuable time with these sites. ORKUT, Groups and Forums are created for Good purpose to develop our skills, Personality development and knowledge but we are using Internet in Wrong way.
We can understand but kids can’t. So, we have to interact with kids friendly and must tell side affects of interest. Blocking may not work perfectly because kids can do open these sites in other way. So, We have to encourage them to use Good sites and always suggest proper tips with love and affection.
my boyfriend looks at porn what do i do?
Then what do I do for Mozilla Firefox
because this works only for internet explorer
How do I block websites using Norton on IE 6? Please advise. Thank you.
How do you unblock websites?
it is the other way around to me.. it works for mozilla but not to ie… how come?
When i try to block the site, it always says that it cannot create the C:\WINDOWS/system32/drivers/etc/host file and make sure the path and file name are correct. I don’t know what that means, can u please explain this.
Might I suggest opendns http://www.opendns.com/
This is more complicated but a great way for free web filtering.
to Madi - simple get a new boyfriend - as for the article - its more effective to block websites at your router where you’re kids can’t get at it - you simply go into your router and block either websites, or block sites that contain specific words that you can list yourself for example, rage parties; wild sex; porn; guns; whatever is your thing - you can google instructions on how to do this for your specific router or just get a techie to do it - its quick and wont cost much
i want to block a particular site in mozilla firefox what to do?
excellent work done to control children seeing 18+ sites
Hi this is ravi i have computer in my home,
how can i block some web sites like (yahoo.comm, rediff.com like this) please tell me any one.
ok, my mother is apparetly trying to outsmart me. she has this computer tech come and now, when i try to access a gaming website, it says “401 The web site is blocked by administrator” what do i do? the host thing says an aditional “127.0.0.1 localhost” on it. should i delete this?
I need help on blocking free on lines games it has chating games on it. Help me………
Bobby
I followed the instructions on how to block websites. When I went to check and typed in youtube.com I got a blank page.Wonderful! But when I went to google.com and typed in YouTube and the search results came up and I clicked on the link, it brought me to the site even though I blocked it. What happened and what do I do?
Well like many of you i’m tired of this pop-ups and adult websites and even though i have an antivirus program and i have my pop-up blockers on some pop-ups still appear. Please help!!!
this is not working for me,i had added the line 127.0.0.1 orkut.com in that notepad and saved it….
but still i can access the orkut sites..
i want to block the site as i found my sis watching sex videos in orkut..i want to block it without her knowledge..plzzzzz help me
Thanks heaps!!! very simple and helpful. It worked perfectly for my Mozilla on my work PC. Now i can restrict myself from visiting friendster or facebook while waiting for my lab work to finish or between lectures ! :)
heyy, please help i tried the Run, Notepad technique and saved it, but the site opens on IE and Mozilla..the thing is that our computer is used by my father’s office people from 9-6 every day….they misuse the internet, since i have 24*7 internet connection, and also they have to access the net for official work….but i need to block gmail, orkut, etc between 9 to 6 everyday, to stop this madness…i am very frustrated!
I did what the instructions said to Block Bebo.com entered it below the last line and saved it but when I went to check if it ws blocked it Was’nt PLEASE help!!!!!! How do I block BEBO.COM!!