Ever faced the problem of let your own kids browsing the web without your supervision?
Here is the problem I had to solve recently: my daughter was about to turn 16 and she was eager to have her own computer on which to do her homework, handle her e-mail, socialize with her friends on-line, and do some research on the web. All of that without being subject to take turns with her brother on the family room computer.
Put it like than, everything seems to be very innocent and safe. But we know very well what lurks on the Internet, ready to jump on their prey. Or maybe just some inappropriate site that you really don’t want your kids to see.
So, how to solve the problem of giving my daughter her own computer, installed in her own room, where both my wife and I cannot really supervise?
I’m sure many of you are already thinking at the many programs available on the market that deal with these kind of things. Programs that you buy, and then you have to pay a subscription to keep updated the database with the blacklisted web sites.
The point is, I don’t like those programs for different reasons:
- I have little or no control on what can be put on those blacklists
- I have to pay for the program
- I have to pay the annual subscription or the database that comes with the program becomes quickly obsolete and basically useless.
What to do then?
Well, I happen to have an old computer that I use to experiment with Linux (you heard about it, right?). This is the kind of operating system that many web site providers use to handle their servers. It is a very powerful OS, it is very stable (you can keep the computer on for weeks without ever needing to reboot it). And it is free. Since I had that, I thought: why don’t I use this computer (the Linux Box, as it’s named by the Linux community) to run a program capable of intercepting and filtering all the web traffic on the home network? Since it is Linux, I have the opportunity to look at the huge list of open source code available on this platform, and surely I will find something that can be used for my purpose.
So, I started studying the problem and came up with a very simple, efficient , and absolutely free solution for my problem: a program that acts as a proxy, like a middle man that sits between each computer in the network and the Internet itself, filtering everything that goes back and forth, and selecting what can be viewed and what cannot. It’s name: SQUID. Yeah, like the name of that very tasteful mollusk.
So I set it up on my Linux Box, made a few adjustments to the network configuration, installed its companion squidGuard, configured the blacklists the way I like it, and let it run.
It is now running in my home network since about a month, smoothly and efficiently, and I have to say it really does a good job the way I desired.
Want to know the details? Keep watching this blog. Next time, I will describe all the details on how to set it up. And don’t be scared. It is not a difficult thing to do. If you ever had the need to install a program on your computer, then you are expert enough to handle this one too.
Hope to see you soon here again…
