My oldest son has informed me that my younger son ( 15 ) has been watching some pretty disturbing stuff on his gaming pc which is in his room. Can I access the WiFi router, see what sites he has been visiting and block them through the router for his pc. Hub is BT, my pc is Mac.
Thanks in advance, this really needs sorting as I’ve younger children in the house.

Wrong forum, but try K9 from BlueCoat.

Also, look at Content filters

I have BT Infinity and use a Netgear router. There are controls on the router for Parental Controls.
What about the security software on the machine, Norton for instance has a Parental control?

Tell him not to?

your pc is Mac?

Norton – nooooooo!
Even if it does offer parental control, the downsides are just horrible.

Most of the big-name commercial ‘security’ products have a massive detrimental effect on your PC, so you have to choose carefully, rather than just using the one that came ‘free’ when you bought the PC.

Computers and drugs – two industries that call their customers ‘users’ 😉

@ soobalias. That’s constructive!

@ jam bo. That would end in a confrontation that I’d rather avoid..

I’d like to block sites at the router if that’s possible.

Perhaps try OpenDNS, it could be just what you’re after.

http://www.opendns.com/

You change your router DNS servers to the OpenDNS ones and it then acts to filter and log (Ithink) all traffic.

It may require your locking down some networking stuff on his PC to ensure he can’t just use alternate DNS providers himself.

edit: the OpenDNS forums detail how to deal with this without needing to touch user machines.

http://forums.opendns.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=2355

Nip it in the bud, talk to him. The police will be showing up and carting you off, it could ruin your life

Assuming you’re using a BT Home Hub I don’t think you can change the DNS server (to openDNS as mentioned above) in the router (that would stop him just changing it back on his PC).

Options are:
Do it on his commputer as an admin and limit his access to the network settings (not very subtle!)
Buy a new ASDL router for 25 quid and do it on that and deny all knowledge.

soobalias – Member

your pc is Mac?

Yes, his personal computer is an Apple MacIntosh.
My personal computer is an IBM compatible Abit.

NOW WHO IS THE ****?

Can I access the WiFi router, see what sites he has been visiting

Maybe not, but if you tell him you can and tell him you didn’t like what you saw, but you will say no more about it as long as you don’t see it again. That might do the trick 🙂

NOW WHO IS THE ****?

Were the starred out word to have six letters, beginning with w and ending with r, then obvs it’s your son.

NOW WHO IS THE ****?

The one without a mac?

If he is 15 then opendns by itself won’t be good enough as he’ll just change his DNS servers or use an anonymous proxy. At a minimum you need to block other dns servers being used. You also need to set up your pc to tell opendns what your ip address is or you then can only use the family friendly version of opendns which may not be restrictive enough.

Alternatively Netgear do some routers that automatically use opendns which may save you a lot of the pain

OpenDNS, and block port 53 outbound on the router. Change the admin password on the router from default. Sorted.

that said, a) I’d suggest education is a better tactic; ie, if he can’t be trusted to have a computer in his room, he can’t have a computer in his room (and are you letting a betrayal of trust go unpunished?). And b) he’s a fifteen year old boy, what do you expect? If I’d have had unfettered access to the web at 15 I’d be on a waiting list for a labrador inside of six months.

Cougar – Moderator
OpenDNS, and block port 53 outbound on the router. Change the admin password on the router from default. Sorted.

Only if he lacks ambition. He could nslookup at school and create a hosts file when he gets home, or use tor, vpn etc.

Move his PC into the lounge, either it’ll stop it happening or he’ll be forever waiting for you to leave the room so he can go for a danger thomas.

Nope. If you think you can implement security on an unsupervised PC in a teenage boy’s bedroom, you’re dreaming. I can about imagine how that would have played out if my parents had tried that with me.

As a random example; he could create a hidden partition with Truecrypt dual-booting into a separate copy of the OS. You can lock down the PC as much as you like and he can just boot into the other copy, and you’d never know.

EDIT – sorry, I missed your point before you edited it. Proxy server, then?

@ cougar & Retro..its not porn I’m talking about here and I’d be a fool to think he hasn’t seen any. Naive I’m certainly not, and I’m sure watching a ‘ terrorist with a chainsaw decapitation tick ‘ is only the action of an inquisitive mind….I just don’t want it

I really think talking to him is the best option, then.

“I know you’re doing this, it has to stop, or you can’t have the computer in the bedroom.”

ObDisclaimer, I am not a parent. (Probably just as well, if a son of mine couldn’t bypass any security I installed, I’d consider putting him up for adoption.)

I would have thought a combination of OpenDNS and a well locked down router would suffice. Coupled with revoking admin rights to the local machine in his room, and preventing it from booting from any media other than the HD, and it would be pretty difficult to get around.

Try a talking to, telling him that you know what he’s been looking at, and that the only way he gets to keep the PC in his room is that you carry out the above measures should work.

Beyond that, the only sure-fire way to stop him is to remove the PC from his room or block his PC from the internet full stop using the router. Even with the BIOS and OS locked down, he could still just flash the bios and boot from Linux off a USB, then tunnel out through a vpn or proxy.