You can do a few things to keep your kids safe from on line predators or inappropriate content. The biggest thing is to install all the items suggested in Nitty Gritty, especially the hosts file. Stop using Internet Explorer altogether to shut down the bad guy pipeline to your home computer. Internet Explorer has security vulnerabilities that allow malicious code and scripts to run on your computer. If you absolutely have to use it, at least turn off ActiveX. You turn off ActiveX in IE by going to Tools then Internet Options then Security then Custom Level then scroll down to the ActiveX section and disable any item there.

The next thing you can do is to make some custom lines in your hosts file to add sites that you do not want your kids visiting. One thing nice about a hosts file is that it is a wall that the kids would be hard pressed to climb over. If you hostblock Myspace for instance, when someone tries to go to it they will get a server error as if the site was down. Kids have a habit of doing things they are not supposed to either by lack of smarts or on purpose out of disregard for your rules. This means that if they are going to mess up a computer by allowing nasties in, it should be their computer. Password protect your computer so they can't access it. You can buy a used computer for $100.00 anymore, so just get one for them. Do a clean install of the operating system, add all the security software, passwords, whatever you want to see on your kids computer. Create an Administrator account for you and user accounts for each child. Now, at this point, you have a healthy computer that is virus free.

Continuing this side trip, consider buying Norton Ghost. Use the floppy version to make a ghost image of the computer. From now on, you can use the CD you create to restore the system instead of spending six hours doing it manually. Please feel free to skip this step if your kids are perfect or if the world becomes perfect. Thought so. This is assuming that you are using Windows, if you are using Linux you don't have to go through all of this, although you still do need to install a hosts file along with Adblock and Flashblock in Firefox. There are other additions to help make their internet experience safer, go through the list at addons.mozilla.org.

Stop by the Hosts File sites linked to in Free Software to become familiar with the basic idea. The hosts file from MVPS will make the computer more kids safe as it blocks more sites. Now it's time to create your custom hosts file addition. Open a text editor like Notepad and type the following:

127.0.0.1 somesite.com

Think about what you don't want your kids to see. Social networking sites like Myspace are for teens or adults so little kids should have sites like those blocked. Yahoo and other web based mail sites are other good candidates. Permanently disabling chat software and chat sites is something else that will help keep predators away. You especially need to block MSN Messenger and Windows Messenger in your firewall. Since you are the Administrator and they are just users, they cannot add programs to the system without your knowledge. If they just have to use a chat client, try Trillian.

Log in to the system as Administrator then navigate to the location of the hosts file. In Windows XP it will be at C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC and in Windows 2000 it will be at C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC. Right-click the hosts file, choose rename, then type in old-hosts. Now, open it. You will see entries like the ones you created for other sites. Scroll to the bottom and copy-paste the contents of your addition. Make sure everything lines up pretty and then save it as HOSTS. Done and done. No, it's not done by a long shot, but it is better.

I normally don't recommend software that costs money, but this is one more exception. If maintaining a hosts file scares you, try Net Nanny. It will keep the bad guys away from your kids computer. They offer a free trial and non-profit & education discounts too.

Another on line activity that you should monitor is email. Thunderbird stores all the emails in one file in the users profile folder which you can access as administrator. It is slightly geeky to do however. For about $6.00 or so a month, you can get a domain that comes with email accounts. This enables you to have an email address like yourname@yoursite.com and even have a web page if you like. The benefit of all this is if you assign a yourdomain.com email address to each of your kids, you can track the emails from a control panel that they can't access. They can change the password and do whatever else they want, but you still can see their emails from the control panel. Just remember to get a "cool" domain name so your kids won't be embarrassed to use it.

Remember, you need to administrate your child's computer. You cannot expect to have everything be OK in todays world without active involvement and intense scrutiny of their on line activities.