Creating Safe Browsing Experiences At Home
Being technical parents, we sometimes take for granted how complicated it can be for parents to create safe browsing experiences in their home. To help, we've prepared a guide designed to help parents think through their approach to blocking online porn in their home network.
Creating a safe browsing experience requires thoughtfulness around the complexities of how the internet works. The guide provides 10 considerations every parent should take when thinking about online porn on their network.
10 Considerations
The guide goes into more details on the following 10 considerations:
| Consideration | |
|---|---|
| Leveraging Content filters | A bit self-servicing, but content control solutions are designed to provide a set and forget solution. |
| Safe Search Options | There is a difference between closed and open platforms. Things like Google are closed platforms, this means that filtering can be tough without things like "safe search". Not all closed platforms offer it, learn how to think about it. |
| Hardening Controls | If content filtering was all that was required, then our job would be done. It, however, is one of a number of different things you should consider. |
| Proxy / VPN Access | For all the good that Proxy and VPN platforms might offer, they come with a dark secret in that they allow a user to bypass controls you might deploy in your home. |
| Social Media Platforms | It's difficult to imagine a time where social media was not so ingrained into our daily lives, the same applies for our kids. You can't think of a safe browsing experience without considering the impact of social platforms. |
| Mobile Devices | Mobile devices are being introduced to kids at the young age of 2 years old. It's amazing, but it also creates a challenge for parents when you think of the openess of the web. |
| Strong Passwords | One of the biggest challenges parents face is thinking they are unique when it comes to protecting the platforms they deploy for safe browsing experiences. Something as simple as a weak password has the potential to dramatically impact the effectiveness of your solution. |
| Proactive Monitoring | Although most solutions are set-and-forget, parents must take a proactive position when it comes to the internet usage in your home. |
| Online Schedules | One of the most effective mechanism available to most parents is "scheduling", learn how you can leverage that to control when the internet is available in your home. |
| Staying Informed | Technology is evolving at a rapid pace, and for many parents it's happening faster than what they realize. Staying abreast of new changes, and evolutions in the technologies used by kids,can have a profound impact to your home network. |
There is no right-way to creating a safe browsing experience at home. Parents sit on either side of a very wide spectrum.
For some parents, it's about controlling every aspect of their kids online journey, and for others, it's about ensuring that nefarious activity is kept off their network only.
Regardless of where you sit on that spectrum, the guide above is designed to open a parents eyes to the complexities of creating safe experience on their home networks and hopefully helps to break the "absoluteness" mindset that one-solution will solve all the problems.
DNS Filtering w/CleanBrowsing
CleanBrowsing provides a cost-effective DNS-based Content Filtering service that blocks access to unwanted content like malicious sites and online pornography.