Name: Thrive! NCHE Homeschool Conference
Start: 2025-05-22T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-05-24T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Winston-Salem, NC

Tagged: internet filter, internet safety, safe browsing, Safe Eyes

This topic has 19 replies, 11 voices, and was last updated 10 years, 6 months ago by pangit.

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 20 total)

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July 2, 2013 at 3:10 am
missceegee
Participant
Doug, we just replaced an aging macbook with a new one for the children and I’m in the middle of set-up.
I have OpenDNS with strict settings, but pornography & nudity still showed in a google search. I just set safe search to on and locked on google. That helped a lot.
In the past, I used the Parental Controls feature to whitelist specific sites, but that poses it’s own problems. Can you offer a good solution for me? The computer is in a central location and has time limits as well as people (ichat, email) limits, but it’s the internet issue that is most problematic. I don’t want the kids to stumble onto something, if I can help it.
Thanks,
Christie
July 2, 2013 at 2:54 pm
Doug Smith
Keymaster
You might check your OpenDNS settings and see if it’s blocking visual search engines. You can check that under the “customize” link for the level of filtering you’ve chosen.
Also keep in mind that the Google safe search settings are tied to the browser. If different browser software is used or the cookies are cleared then your preference for that setting will not be in place.
Another option might be CovenantEyes, which is a paid service that offers both filtering and e-mailing you a usage report.
July 2, 2013 at 3:00 pm
MelissaB
Participant
I hope some others chime in. We have pc’s, but this has been an ongoing problem for me. We have Safe Eyes (have had it for two years now) and it’s okay. I finally called the other day after it was blocking some random things hubby was looking up and then not blocking obvious things we want to block (I was testing it and these were not things my children found – shocking because I thought I had all the correct boxes checked to avoid porn and such, but that wasn’t cutting it at all!). The customer service agent was helpful and showed me where to enter key words in to a section to make sure things were blocked, but I’m now having problems with pinterest not working properly on the computers with Safe Eyes. I emailed customer service yesterday because I didn’t have time to talk and haven’t heard back yet.
I don’t think there is any one perfect solution to the blocking the yuckiness of the internet. I am happy enough with Safe Eyes I guess because it expired on Sunday and I renewed it. I don’t have any other better option at this point, but it’s $50/yr. I know that Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op is having a group buy starting next week on it, but I couldn’t wait a week to renew. I found a $10 renewal coupon code online so that helped. I guess I can’t put a price on my children losing there innocence seeing porn online can I?
One other thing is you can block certain websites or only allow certain websites as well as block just certain activities (ie no YouTube or no online chat rooms or no social networking, etc). It’s really user friendly and for the most part it’s been fine, it’s just now annoying that pinterest doesn’t work and that irks my daughter who loves it a LOT! Maybe it’s a sign that she needs to have less computer time???
If you have any questions about it, I can try to answer them. Not sure if this is the info you were looking for. One other thing, I tried to implement Microsoft Live Family Safety because it’s free and could never get it to work on our main desktop. I think that is a viable free option, but even after talking to MS customer service, I got no where and they wanted to charge me $100 to remotely access my computer and figure out the problem. I know the MS won’t work for you, but maybe it will for others with a pc.
Melissa
July 2, 2013 at 4:57 pm
akirechelle
Participant
Hi Melissa, it might be blocking Pinterest because sadly there are a lot of inappropriate pins. I no longer feel safe to search pinterest. I just pin my own or repin from friends. Despite the settings on my computer, the images from pinterest were able to show….
July 3, 2013 at 3:17 am
MelissaB
Participant
Oh how sad, thanks for sharing about Pinterest – nothing is safe, is it?
July 6, 2013 at 9:08 am
missceegee
Participant
Doug, I didn’t realize that google safe search resets. I’ll pay attention to that. I hate to turn off the visual search engine feature via opendns, but that is probably my best option. Thanks.
July 6, 2013 at 9:25 pm
Doug Smith
Keymaster
Safe search does help with Google image search too. Bing has a similar setting as well that is worth checking, though I believe it may be on by default.
But if those aren’t set to a safe mode, then they are probably one of the mostly likely ways for our kids to stumble on things they shouldn’t see from simply searching on what seem to be totally harmless phrases. So either checking the safe search mode now and then or limiting visual search through OpenDNS is probably prudent.
July 7, 2013 at 5:51 pm
beloved
Participant
Has anyone used Net Nanny?
August 23, 2013 at 4:59 pm
MomOfFourDears
Participant
Hello –
I was hoping to revive the internet safety thread again. Does anyone have any good recommendation on what is working for their family? I would love to have my children be able to work on the computer without the constant dread of what they may accidentally bring up. In the past I have heard of people liking K9 – the older free version, but doing research I am reading about some not liking the newer versions. I would love to hear about free or lower cost options that others like….but ultimately am willing to pay a reasonable fee for a good filter which doesn’t block things unnecessarily.
Thanks in advance for your input!
August 23, 2013 at 6:50 pm
curlywhirly
Participant
Our family has used http://www.bsecure.com/ for years. It works very well, but like all of the options has to be tweaked occassionally or there is a trade off of non-harmful sites occassionally getting blocked.
August 24, 2013 at 2:45 am
MomOfFourDears
Participant
Thank you for your response. I will look into that one. Yes, I guess there is not going to be a perfect solution. I agree that something that blocks well and has some good control options is worth having some occasional extra blocking. Thanks again!
October 16, 2014 at 6:57 pm
pangit
Participant
Hi,
I’m needing to do something on our computers so that I can allow our children to research things. I’m not sure what to use. Does anyone have any “updates” on whether they like or don’t like what they are using or is there somthing different out? Thanks
October 16, 2014 at 7:46 pm
MelissaB
Participant
After I was *happy* with SafeEyes and raved about it, I didn’t end up renewing again. It was becoming so frusterating to the kids & DH, plus I was still able to pull up questionable things that I had blocked.
We now have the Microsoft parental controls from Family Safety inplace on the computer and it’s actually worse because I have them pretty much locked down. There is NO safe search engine. I actually found one – KidRex.org (it passed all my questionable content requests) that worked great, but it’s powered by Google so I can’t block Google without blocking the use of KidRex and I have Google blocked. It would be fine if the kids didn’t know how to just type Google in the address bar, but my kids are older so they can easily get around it.
So for now, they have time limited that is only on the honor system since Windows 7 doesn’t enable time enforcement on the parental controls and if they want to go any website, they have to type it in and can’t use a search engine.
I think the internet is such a pain with kids. I honestly wish we didn’t have the internet, but I know it’s helpful and wonderful even those it’s awful and evil. It’s just really hard with kids to make sure you protect them from the bad.
So I’m of no help, but this is where I am at this point. I honestly don’t know what we’ll do next.
October 16, 2014 at 10:35 pm
missceegee
Participant
I still have Open DNS and it works fairly well. DD13 can search on her computer most anything, ds10 still only visits white listed sites. We are an Apple family and for years the Parental Controls just worked and well for blocking, allowing, and time. Now, there are issues with secure websites. Still with the two, it’s working fairly well.
Christie
October 17, 2014 at 2:10 am
Monica
Participant
We have used K9 Web Protection for about 8 years now and I really like it. It’s free, also.
Someone mentioned Pinterest having lots of inappropriate Pins. I don’t know if it because of K9, but I have never seen that!