Hi all, I have a question for people that have some experience in parenting, especially in parenting control in the Internet? What kind of third-party software do you use and which do you find the best? I want to set up control over my home PC and I'm looking for the best solution. I've got Windows 8 in my PC.

Thanks for any help in advance !

I think K9 is very good:

http://www1.k9webprotection.com/

K9 is nice indeed. I heard that NetNanny and PCWebControl are also fine :)

Well, I use actual parental control, rather than parental control software.

That's great until they reach the age of 8-9, at which point they make every effort to deceive that actual parental control. I have a work colleague who found that her 14-year-son was googling stuff like "circumvent netnanny" (they were actually using something else, but he wasn't stupid).

^This! Education is the best parental control :D Too much paranoia nowadays about "protecting" teenagers from themselves... I've first discovered my dad's hidden VHS collection when I was about 12, and I haven't gone crazy or weirdo or whatever because of them =))

Not a parent myself, but this seems to be the most sensible solution.

Do kids these days even use PCs that much to get online? Most seem to use their smartphones (and tablets/phablets) for that.

Even my wife is like that nowadays, she hangs around in Facebook etc. with the phone and tablet 99% of the time (while I am 99% of the time on the PC). One time when she accessed Facebook from Windows, she was totally lost how it works and how to do even the basic functions. She was so accustomed to mobile Facebook.

Same with Skype actually.

My experience has been that kids use phones for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram (whatever that is) chat and some games, but desktop/laptop PCs for pretty much everything else.

OpenDNS for your home network. That's what I use. It filters by changing your DNS, so you don't need software on your machines and even a friend coming over can't access what you don't want.

I also agree that parenting is a great solution. But not parenting through ignorance. Tracking what's going on over your network and/or limiting access is a great tool to help protect your kids and your computers from the villainy over the Internet. And there's a lot worse out there than just porn.

If you do decide to track, I think it's important to discuss why you want to track and for how long. Once they're older, I plan on tracking my kids' Internet use to help them stay safe, help ease the possibility of porn addiction, to stay out of chat roulette (or whatever the next pervy thing is) and avoid predators. I think it's important that your kids don't utilize the Internet for unhealthy habits, but use it for a tool for classic gaming :), friendly emails, research and news.

Even with parental blockers, kids can still get to some stuff. So treat the software as a tool, not as a solution. You should be talking to them about the dangers of the Internet and what it can do for good and evil.

i think its cool to give the kids chance to get interested in hacking, internet security and how to go about anonymous. Not bad skill for the future ;)

Anyways, my own kids are that old yet, so using nothing atm.

Parental controls aren't there to prevent children from intentionally looking for things you find objectionable, they are to help both of you to reduce the chance of them accidentally seeing those things. If you're embroiled in a parent vs child battle over access to porn and whatnot, you have already failed. Don't antagonize your child. Don't present yourself as an obstacle to be overcome.

Yes, trying to shield them from 'bad things' is just delaying the inevitable (and generally, kids always learn bad things way earlier than expected). On the other hand, teaching them the fundamentals of security and respect of people is the best you can hope for.

Here you go:

I didn't dare to make such joke, thanks XD