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Blocking Adult Porn Sites?
NEWLINEtv
Posts: 5,420 Forum Member
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Hi, what is/are the best method(s) to block adult porn sites from the computer please, browser is firefox.
Thank You.
Thank You.
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NEWLINEtv
Posts: 5,420
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Best not to use a browser specific option as to get around this you could just use another browser
and if you employ technical measures people tend to feel that whatever they can see is ok to look at.
best option is always to just tell people what you expect.
you know i came back to this thread specifically to make that joke.
i had this niggling feeling i'd missed an easy one.
All that is assuming you are trying to block them from the children!!
I have an Netgear, and it allows me to if I need to but don't, have tried in the past and it works. Just entered in 'Face' and 'Mess', and my younger brother & sister had a feel day trying to talk to no avail.
Also, you can use the 'Hosts' files routine, but you need to know all the IP addresses for each site. Do a search on google, and sure there are loads and loads and loads of sites. So not a good idea this way.
Like others have said, if you are using Win7 this has Parental Control software on it, but you need to use 2 accounts, like Admin and Standard.
Windows 7 + windows live + parental controls is pretty restrictive and you can give it a 'white list' of good sites that are allowed, everything else can be blocked. Don't forget with google images that its easy to use cached data without having to visit the site and most filters can't desl with having the porn in foreign sites.
That's not quite true - you only need to know the adult site url(s), though of course there are an awful lot of them. An entry like the following will block* anything from somepornsite.com:
There is a hosts file at http://hostsfile.org/hosts.html that seems to have porn and gambling blocking included but I don't know how thorough it is.
*Yeah, I know that strictly speaking it's a redirect not a block, but it does the job
ETA - all of the above comments regarding the difficulty of imposing a 100% effective block are of course valid - for example, if someone knows about the hosts file then it will be trivially easy for them to get around it....
But yeah, basicaly, what man makes man breaks.
hosts blocking is unreliable, if the web address starts with an ip address instead of a domain name, hosts can't block it!
As long as you don't expect any of these kinds of parental/filtering services to give 100% results, you can be reasonably satisfied with the results. Just don't forget that they won't automatically block P2P and instant messaging services - both of which can also be used to share porn.
There is no fool-proof way of blocking it in your own home, let alone stop what they might bring home on a phone or other storage devices they've got from mates at school, so rather than trying to block it at home, be honest with them about what you consider is acceptable, and what you would rather not have them watch when at home. If you try to ban something entirely that they are interested in, they're gonna find a way around it one way or another.
They know that I can see all their traffic and that if they access unsuitable websites I will disable their access to the internet.
Tell them you have ways of tracking every site they've visited, every image they've viewed and everything they've searched for and that if you find out they've been somewhere unsavoury there'll be hell to pay.