Qustodio is a free parental control and Internet monitoring application for the Windows operating system. The developers claim that the program is protected against tampering. That’s a bold claim and one of the things that I investigated during tests.

When you first install the software on a Windows computer system you are asked to create an admin account. This account is used to manage and limit online access. The program asks you to select the number of children that use the computer and suggests to create a separate Windows account for the children for improved protection against tampering. New accounts can be generated effortlessly during setup.

A restart is required once the initial setup has been completed before the actual monitoring and protecting starts.

The program opens an activity summary page when the admin user is logged in that provides information about a user’s activities. This includes the type of websites visited (like tech, entertainment and social networking) as well as individual websites that have been opened by the selected user.

The Rules and Settings tab allows the parent to configure web browsing rules. Here it is for instance possible to enable or disable certain types of websites. This works similar to the filtering provided by OpenDNS where users can enable or block website categories as well. Several website categories are blocked by default, including websites related to mature content, weapons or violence. Additional categories like games, forums, health or social networking sites can be added to the block list. Another possibility is to allow access to a category but add it to a list of monitored categories. The program will send out emails whenever children are accessing websites that are listed under that category.

Qustodio’s effectiveness relies on the configuration of user accounts for each children on the system, as well as additional hardening that include blocking the computer’s BIOS with a password and disabling booting from optical discs and external drives.

This should keep most children away from bypassing the parental controls configured on the computer.

Qustodio works on the user account level which means that it provides more protection than programs designed to protect children in a specific web browser or only certain types of programs. Parents can download the free parental control software from the developer website. It is fully compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. (via)

Some parents for instance may want to configure the computer in a way that their children are only able to use it when they are at home to control computer usage. This is best done with time limits, which are part of the parental controls of the Windows 7 operating system.

Parental Controls, as the name suggests, have been mainly designed for parents to restrict their children’s computer access. The controls can however be used by organizations and businesses as well, for instance to block applications or restrict computer access to opening hours.

Parental Controls are enabled in the Windows Control Panel. You can open the menu with a click on the Start Orb, and the selection of Control Panel from the Start Menu.

Locate set up parental controls for any user under User Accounts and Family Safety. The menu lists all known accounts on the system. Make sure there are at least two, one for the system administrator and one for the user or users who need to be restricted.

Click on the user account that you want to configure. The menu that opens should look similar to the one that you see on the screenshot above.

All options are disabled by default, and your first move is to enable parental controls by setting it to “On” at the top left corner of the screen.

This enables access to Time Limits, Games and Allow and block specific programs. All of the options are off by default. Click on the Time Limits setting.

This opens a table that represents the hours and days of the week. The days are the rows, the hours the columns. The white color indicates that access to the account is allowed at that time, blue means account access is blocked.

A left mouse click turns allowed hours of a day into blocked hours and vice verse. The example above blocks access to the account on all days between midnight and 10 am, and 6pm to midnight. The restricted user is only able to log in between 10 am and 6 pm.

A click on ok adds the time limitation, and the parental controls overview should indicate that with Time Limits: On under Current Settings.

Administrators can change or remove time limits and other parental control settings at anytime. It is also important to set an account password for every administrator account to prevent access by restricted users.

One such tool for Linux is GNOME Nanny. GNOME Nanny works to block sites visited and times used for web browsing, chatting, email, and even PC use time. And, unlike making use of a Proxy, GNOME Nanny is incredibly easy to use. Let’s take a look at this helpful tool.

Installation

There are a couple of ways to install Nanny. If you are using Ubuntu you can simply do the following:

Open up a terminal window.

Issue the command sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nanny.

Issue the command sudo apt-get update.

Issue the command sudo apt-get install nanny.

Once Nanny is installed you are ready to take advantage of this tool.

Usage

Figure 1

To start up Nanny click System > Administration > Parental Control and then enter your sudo (or root user) password. When this window opens (see Figure 1) you will first need to click the button to give you admin privileges (without the admin password you can not gain the privileges necessary to make changes to Nanny).

Once you have been escalated to admin privileges you can then schedule usage time for PC, web, email, and chat usage. Before you start setting up services to be blocked you will first want to select a user. One of the nice things about Nanny is that it allows you to set completely different configurations for all users on the system.

After you select a user, to set allotted times for each service, just click on the tab for the function you want to control, check the box for “Use…” and then set the times for use. The best way to set the time allowed is to click on the green blocks (each green block is actually two half hour increments). If a block is green it means it is a usable time. If a block is red it means it is a non-use time.

Figure 2

If you want to block certain sites from being viewed click on the Web Browser tab and then click on the Configure button. When you do this the Web Content Filtering Configuration window will open. In this window click Add and then enter the details for the site you want to block (see Figure 2).

After you’ve added a site, it might take a moment for the configuration to take effect. But once it does, that site will not be reachable by anyone. You can also import blocked sites from Blacklists. To do this click System > Administration > Blacklists. You will need to already have the blacklist on your machine, but the import process is very straight-forward.

Final thoughts

If you have a need to add parental controls to a Linux box, look no further than GNOME Nanny. Not only will it offer very predictable results, it is incredibly simple to set up and manage.

If someone wants to access specific contents, they usually will find a loophole to do so. That does not mean that parents should not restrict access to those sites as best as they can. This article takes a look at some of the options provided. Now, all of those solutions are solutions for a single computer system, or a small network of computers. They do not prevent a child from visiting a friend’s house to view all the contents that are blocked at home. And they do not block contents that are already on the PC or transferred to the PC from mobile devices, hard drives or DVDs.

DNS Providers With Filtering Options

The domain name system (DNS) is used to “translate” web addresses into IP addresses. This is usually done by the Internet Service Provider, with the option to switch to another provider. Users who switch providers usually do that for one of the following reasons:

• Censorship on part of the ISP
• Faster DNS lookups
• Filtering options and other additional features

One of the DNS providers that offers filtering is Open DNS. There are others that offer similar services, just search on Bing or another search engine for them. Users who create a free account at the Open DNS website can configure the filtering options in detail.

web content filtering

Here it is possible to select one of the preconfigured filtering levels (e.g. High for blocking 26 different site categories from adult themed over tasteless to P2P file sharing and drugs). There is also a custom option that gives the user the option to define the categories that should be filtered out automatically.

Filtering means that sites that fall into those categories will not be displayed to the computer user. Filters are only as good as their detection algorithms, and it can happen that sites slip past them. Parents who find out about those sites can add them to the filtering list manually to block them in the future.

block pornographic websites

A user visiting one of those websites will see a message like the one shown in the screenshot above. Open DNS is offering a special service that they call FamilyShield. It is basically a custom filtering configuration that blocks adult sites, anonymizers and proxies, phishing and malware sites.

Verdict: Efficient filtering options that work on all devices configured to use the new DNS provider, but difficulty to configure for non-tech-savvy computer users.

Google Safe Search Filtering

Google is the most popular search engine in the world. Google, and other search engines like Bing, offer so called safe search filters to filter out search results that are deemed inappropriate. Google by default applies moderate filtering to search results. Moderate means that the search engine filters out explicit images. This can be changed to strict filtering to filter text and images from the search results, or no filtering for users who prefer to see all results regardless of their nature.

safe search settings in Google Search Settings

Google recently has added an option to lock the safe search filtering settings. Once done an image is shown on all Google pages indicating that safe search filtering is active.

Verdict: The settings are relatively effective, but very easy to bypass. All it takes is to switch to another search engine, Internet browser, or clear the cookies of the standard browser to reset the safe search filtering settings. Good additional option but to weak as the standalone filtering option.

Browser add-ons

Browser add-ons are another option to block pornographic websites. Firefox users can for instance install Foxfilter, a filtering add-on that automatically scans every page load and determines whether the page needs to be blocked or not. Blocked pages are indicated to the user.

content filter

The settings offer options to add websites to a whitelist, in case they get blocked but should not be. Other add-ons and plugins that fall into this category are Censure Block or Christian Anti-Porn for Firefox, Kid Safe for Chrome (which only displays a warning but does not block) or Simple Profanity Filter.

Like settings for specific search engines, browser add-ons are limited to their environment. If a user switches to another browser, then nothing can be done about it.

Parent Control, Filtering Applications

Most parental control applications come at a cost. There are a few free solutions available, like Untangle which basically is a security software with a web filtering component. Still, most tools are commercial in nature and therefor not included in this review. Several commercial security suites also come with parental controls to block specific types of websites.

Verdict: Applications often block contents on a system wide level, as long as they are running on the user’s account as well. There are still options to circumvent applications, for instance by booting from a Linux Live CD or connecting another system to the router directly.

Misc blocking options

Block Porn with Proxy Auto Configuration Files [link], very technical in nature, and limited to the browser the proxy is configured in.

How To Block Porn Pictures And Images With SafeSquid Proxy Server [link], aimed at system administrators and not end users.

Verdict

Blocking porn with DNS filtering appears to the most effective option for most environments. It has to be noted that this is effective, but not fool proof either. Children with enough determination and time will eventually find a way to bypass the restrictions, if they are determined to do so.

Let us know in the comments if you know of another free option to block porn and other contents on the internet.

Game Protector could be the solution here. (There are many others like creating separate user profiles for example). The application can password protect any executable that you select. While it is called Game Protector it can virtually protect any other executable as well. Usage is simple and straightforward.

The user browses to the folder the executable is in and selects it in the file browser. He then enters the password to protect the file from users who do not have the password. It is also possible to change the icon of the executable and to rename it.

A click on Protect will protect the executable with the password. The main interface contains options to create a backup first and to unprotect an executable again.

A password box is displayed whenever a protected executable is launched. Entering the password will start the executable normally while a false password will simply display the form again. One advantage of this service is that Game Protector does not have to be running in the background to protect the executable.