Can someone suggest a good software to make porn sites and other adult
material inaccesible from our computer which is used by our kids to
browse internet for their other school work related needs.

Hi Tuhitu -

There are a few highly recommended software programs designed to
protect children from porn and adult material.

Perhaps the most well known is NetNanny
 - http://www.netnanny.com/

Net Nanny 5 has been singled out for its extensive privacy controls
and open filtering features, which keep the parents in control,
instead of relying on someone else's idea of what should and should
not be filtered.

Another blocker recommended by Software 4 Parents is CyberSentinal,
which has taken some flak for blocking some sites (for instance, an
information site on sexually transmitted diseases) in its zealous
protection efforts.
 - http://www.securitysoft.com/new601/cs_home.htm

Yet a third is Cyber Sitter, which is also a filter for internet
content.
 - http://www.cybersitter.com/

And information on protecting your children online can be found on the
Software 4 Parents site.
 - http://www.software4parents.com/

My recommendation, since the prices are all about the same, is Net
Nanny, because it gives you control of what you feel is appropriate
for your child or children.

Search Terms
============

 - blocking software
 - child safety online


Good luck and hope this helps,
Serenata

Keep in mind that such software is usually trivial to bypass for a kid
that wants to see porn, and is an unnecessary annoyance for a kid that
doesn't.

It is hardly trivial for a kid to bypass software such as Net Nanny 5
on a computer running Windows 2000 or Windows XP. I personally
disagree about the unnecessary annoyance part, as links can be
misleading.

Young children should certainly be protected and monitored when using
the internet.

tisme-ga

Trivial is relative, I guess, but it most certainly can be done by a
kid with a little bit of knowledge. It depends on the age of the kids
- kindergarteners shouldn't be exposed to a lot of stuff on the
Internet, while high schoolers are often irritated by a) the lack of
trust that such software implies and b) the large amount of false
positives (the National Organization for Women, the Episcopal Church,
etc...). In general, personally monitoring the way your kids are using
the Internet is better than relying on a fallible program to do it for
you.

Actually, I prefer the blocking software of PureSight
<http://www.puresight.com>.

The problem is that any enterprising kid can circumvent blocking
software. One way is available from the anti-censorship site
Peacefire. Here's a selection from their page on the subject
<http://www.peacefire.com/circumventor/simple-circumventor-instructions.html>
--

"With these steps, you can turn your home computer into a miniature
Web server that you and your friends can connect to when your Internet
access is censored. If you are blocked from accessing a Web site, you
can connect instead to the Web site running on your home computer,
where you will be able to access a form that lets you type in the URL
of the Web site that you want to see. Then the contents of that site
will be displayed to you even though you never actually access the
site directly. Because these steps involve running a Web server on
your home computer, they require you to have some type of "always-on"
Internet connection, i.e. DSL or cable modem, in order to turn your
home computer into a circumventor site... These instructions work
under Windows XP and Windows 2000 only..."

That's what parents are up against.

Good luck,
ravuri-ga

We have a lot of information about this type of software at:

http://www.Software4Parents.com

Regards

Josh