This document is meant to provide a quick and easy checklist of ways to protect your home from the invasion of pornography and other inappropriate content which runs rampant on the internet and broadcast media these days.
First, get yourself a good Internet filtering program. I have tried a few. The only one I have found which is both very customizable and foolproof enough for my needs is ContentProtect. (It recently changed names to Net Nanny Parental Controls. As far as I can tell, it's still the same great product.)
Just having an Internet filter installed IS NOT ENOUGH! There are any number of ways a knowledgeable person can get around the filter. Perhaps the biggest hole is the "install another operating system" method. This is done by simply booting from the Windows CD to create another OS instance on a machine, one which does not have any filtering installed. It's also possible to make the existence of this second OS virtually invisible if a user knows how to edit a text system file called boot.ini, which is typically in the root directory of the installation drive (usually C:\).
Another common error is not shutting off complete access by others to the administrative email account. This often happens if a household has only one primary email account for the home, and the email just goes to mom's computer. Anyone with access to mom's computer and email can easily request and make a change to the administrative password by using any "forgot my password" feature in the Filtering software. The key point therefore is to make sure the administrative computer is protected by a login, and the administrator logs off when they are not using the computer. Alternately, you could use a work or web-based mail account for your administrative account. Just make sure to always log off when you are done reading mail, and do not use any "save my password on this machine" options.
Finally, the effectiveness of this, or any similar plan, requires that the reponsible individual is able to keep passwords and/or safe combinations secret. If passwords and restricted software is kept in a locked cabinet, then obviously the key must not be accessible by others at any time.
Okay, now here is a checklist to ensure your computer and television are not going to be conduits for porn to get into your home.
- Computer Operating Systems / Hardware
- Store all computer operating system disks (Windows, Linux, Mac OS, etc.) in a secure place. Locked or in a combination safe might be good.
- Permit others to use operating system disks only while supervised.
- Internet Filter
- Make sure the email address associated with administrative settings on your internet filter can be accessed only by yourself, and that no one else in the household could contact the owner of that email address to make modifications to your email account.
- Set the password for this email address to something which no one else can guess or discover. If you must write down the password, store it in a secure location.
- Television
- Block all explicit content types (R, NC-17, Mature ratings) and “adult” channels on the cable box.
- If possible, hide the titles of inappropriate programs. No need to entice people by what they see could be available.
- Remove channels from the channel menu which should not be viewed.
- Set the override pin to a number you alone know. Consider changing the pin periodically (it may be possible for a very persistent or bored person to learn the pin by typing in all the numbers from 1 to 9999).
Regularly check that everything you have configured is still in place.