Richard Bensley richardbensley@mhplastics.com wrote:
[...] At some point I want to try to and convince a co-worker to let me put something like Ubuntu on their machine. Whilst they wont need some bloated Anti Virus suite, said suites also contain tools to help protect their kids from the darker side of the Internet. What does Linux offer to help censor and protect children from what the Internet has to offer?
I think you should wait for the co-worker to ask you to install Ubuntu. If you try to convince them, be very careful and check Linuxmanship http://zgp.org/~dmarti/linuxmanship/
The only tools that can truly protect kids from the internet are wire-cutters, locks and blocks on all the ports. Bearing that in mind, filtering tools include things like dansguardian and shorewall. For children, I'd run them in an "only allow these sites" configuration. For older minors, I'd run them the other way, or maybe not at all - at that age, it's more important to put time into educating than censoring. After all, the tools will never keep up with all the horrors out there (people have posted goatse to myspace...) and children can get into horrible trouble typing their personal details into a fairly innocent chat site.
Regards,