
Ask HN: Are there technical measures you take to protect your children online? - CharlesW
I don&#x27;t want to spy on my kids, but I also want to take reasonable steps to protect my children from bad actors and can&#x27;t-be-unseen internet content.<p>My wife and I talk with them about internet safety, but I&#x27;m interested in what (if any) technical measures HN moms, dads, and guardians have found helpful as age-appropriate internet guardrails.
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mixmastamyk
Yes, I use screentime on our iPod touch. Still a bit buggy sometimes but
usually works. How I set it up:

\- 8am-9pm

\- Time limits per category, say 1 hour per day weekdays, 1.5 hours weekends

\- Safari, only with whitelisted educational sites like Wikipedia, pbskids,
etc.

\- No social media accounts allowed.

\- Location services off, other access (microphone, camera, etc) denied to
most apps.

\- No Youtube or other predatory apps. See recent HN stories:

Google, YouTube to Pay $170M Penalty over Collecting Kids' Personal Info:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20876960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20876960)

Adult Content Disguised as Kids Videos Is Flooding YouTube:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21937464](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21937464)

I restrict Netflix as well because most kids programming is low quality even
when not inappropriate.

~~~
Nextgrid
How old are your kids? I’m not a parent so I have a different perspective but
I wonder, what kind of stuff could actually be done on such a device? Web
browsing restrictions mean you can’t actually browse the web in a meaningful
way because most links lead to non-whitelisted websites. Time limits mean
there’s barely any time to do anything (and you’d end up running into the
limit at the worst possible time).

~~~
mixmastamyk
That’s the point. Tenish. An hour or two per day is plenty, imho. Usage is
mostly iMessage with friends, learning Japanese, photos, and listening to
music and podcasts. It warns you and easy to ask for a bit more time. Leaves
plenty of time for reading, family, and chores.

I also put many of these restrictions on myself recently so I could get more
sleep, haha.

------
rotterdamdev
Don't give them a mobile phone until they are 16. Give them a dumb phone, if
you must. Educate them if the why. Be consistent and use a dumb dumbphone
yourself.

Nothing works that you don't do yourself. My parents told me not to smoke as
they lot their cigarettes. Told me it's an adult thing, which was a very bad
idea now that I think about it. I don't smoke, but not because of them. If
anything, in spite of

~~~
rotterdamdev
One more thing, I'd give them desktop computers so they learn to differentiate
time spent on the screen and time spent away from it. Laptops are too easy to
bring to bed, toilet, etc. Just like smart phones.

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mike_d
Not a parent, but I did build parts of OpenDNS's content filtering offering.
You can point your routers DNS to 208.67.222.123 and 208.67.220.123 to get a
basic level of filtering for the most obvious porn, malware, and phishing
sites. More fine grained network controls come with an account.

~~~
krupan
Yup. A similar service:

[https://cleanbrowsing.org/](https://cleanbrowsing.org/)

------
jerome-jh
I used to use OpenDNS for my grown-up child who is now an adult. For my
younger daughters, we use basically nothing. The rules are:

\- no tablet after dinner

\- no tablet in the bedroom

\- ask before searching something on the internet

They are only loosely enforced, but we are always in a position to ask: "what
are you watching/doing?" and do so casually from time to time. Search engines
filter inappropriate contents much better than a few years ago. No Youtube,
and they moved away Youtube kid by themselves, preferring TV replay.

They are not old enough to have a phone, so that is pretty easy, for now :)

------
codycraven
11 and 6yo kids here.

In Android: We use Family Link to approve apps installation and set app time
limits per day. No social/user generated content apps. 11yo has access to Edge
browser (more on that in Windows).

In Windows: We use Microsoft Family to monitor screen time/usage. We also
whitelist webpages that can be visited through Edge (settings translate to
Android's Edge).

We only just got a SIM card for our 11yo (so we and family can communicate
with her), we closely monitor usage and gave strict guidelines about not
answering calls/texts from numbers not in the contact list.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Unfortunately android and windows are known to be collecting, storing, and
(windows) potentially selling lots of information about the user and device. I
think this makes them unsuitable for children.

~~~
rotterdamdev
It's not about privacy, it's about not letting kids fall for Skinner box sites
like YT, imgur, etc

~~~
mixmastamyk
It’s about privacy and those things.

------
krupan
Whitelisting. I have used webconverger, routerlimits, and Screen Time (on
Apple devices) at various times and places to achieve this. Anything else I
tried, the darn kids found ways around.

------
stevenicr
Depends on age and maturity.

When given access to computing had discussions about finding things you may
not understand or extreme weird things - and that he/she can talk with us to
discuss these things.

We occasionally look at url history to this day.

later showed how to use multiple sources to check for accurate info and showed
how mayo clinic, webmd, a few others may offer different details.

Showed articles from the news where people stalked and tried to kidnap based
upon online chats.

Did research on software - used family-link on google to block things until
age 13 when family auto-destructs.

Had discussions every few months about how people show edited bad things to
get others to to bad things - story about the 'bernie sanders freedom sticks'
\- other challenges' where people got seriously hurt or killed.

Talked about how sharing a picture could give you your exact location in
multiple ways.. and if other details were known like time or whether or time
school starts, how that process is easier.

Decided Disney cirlce's dns poison on the router and via app on the phone is
the best censoring we could find. Then found out we can't afford it.

Found out other kid never uses youtube on his phone and cant use directions
apps cuz the family link from google.. found out other kid tells that kid to
install amino chat(?) and it iframes youtube (non-kids version) - they are
hackers already..

Show article from yahoo news recently about the grooming kids via list of
apps, getting them to send pics, then blackmail for more - depression and
crap.

Show them that anyone can voice change and appear to be a girl or kid using
phone apps and even method to do so on playstation mic.

Show how I can use a cam plugin to show "live cam" form my system, which is
actually some random girl not me..

I have been considering getting some people together to build an app that
semi-spies on kid's audio - and auto erases 90% of it.. and only sending a
notice or save if it gets hits on certain keywords.. and make that toggle-able
for various parents.. some might want sex keywords.. I think suicide related
ones would be pretty universal.. but able to toggle others.. some parents no
cuss words.. it's still various napkins of ideas.. something maybe with
mycroft or similar that does not send audio to the cloud..

Keeping an ear out... my stepkid can and does tell me various things that are
going in his digital world and I cam always accepting / listening, not getting
angry - and I offer counter info on occasion..

The surprise I had when I found that a meme-thread-group was pushing extreme
anti-feminist stuff... I did not show my emotions, I instead offered multiple
other viewpoints and said perhaps reality is in the middle and there are
extremes and edge cases here and there that do not represent the masses..

Looked into the open source disney-circle like thing - could not figure out
how to make it work after studying a couple hours.

There have been more things over things, I'll try to remember and add.

~~~
Nextgrid
Kudos on showing your kids real-world examples of how bad stuff is done and
the consequences of it, but on the other hand by reading your list it seems
like there’s so much danger out there it would be a miracle if any kid manages
to survive.

Counterpoint: grew up with full unrestricted access to the internet - parents
were both trusting me not to do bad things and also clueless about technology.
Saw things most parents would consider the end of the world (aka pornography),
somehow it didn’t kill me or seemed to affect me in any way and I still ended
up fine.

~~~
stevenicr
I appreciate your counter point completely. I would not care too much if my
kids viewed some porn, but might want to keep a look out to make sure it did
not turn into being only the 'forced' type that xham offers.. I think people
need to see a little of everything that is out there.. but more importantly
have people or groups they can go to and talk about what they have seen - and
know they can research multiple sources for info about things to know effects
of them.

This was not too much a concern when the main desire was club penguin and
youtube... however once a large par tof net access becomes amino chats,
discord chats, meme boards and the such, I think it's important to discuss
some of the dangers if it's relevant (I noticed when asked to fix something on
the phone that selfie's started appearing in gallery) - this could be innocent
but it could also be leading to not so much

If I had a daughter she might spend all of her time only chatting with her
close friends she knows in real life until college - in which case my
discussions would probably not be so many 'these-bad-things-can happen' \- a
different situation compeltely..

I used news stories and stuff that has aired on local tc broadcasts, and some
from yahoo and such - I did not dig deep for horror stories... I think the
most important thing is not to flip out and remain an open line of
communication no matter how terrible something could be.

So again it varies by each person... I don't think you want to wait until your
kid is swatting the neighbors and showing off on 4chan to pay attention to
what they are learning / engaging in online.

I also would not have a device report to me if it heard youngsters talking
about sex, people should talk about that and share what they know. I would
perhaps want an alert if 'plane tickets' came up or 'sneak out' or 'skip
school' maybe.. then I'd want to know more surrounding, but that is now and
that might be different a couple years from now.

