Recently, I was asked if I could recommend for parental control software. I thought I’d share my response with a larger community.
From: John
To: Concerned Parent
I installed Optenet web filtering software two years ago. Click Here for more info My daughter took great pride in circumventing every other program I installed prior to this application. She couldn’t crack Optenet, however, as it installed itself in the kernel and it couldn’t be uninstalled without an admin password. Why did I lock her down even though the computer is in a public place in our home? Well, whenever she was on the computer, she got short with her mom and me. She wouldn’t talk with us, only grunt. In addition, she was spending far too much time chatting and surfing the web. Optenet let me set a weekly time allotment for her web surfing. It also let me completely shut down instant messaging and access to certain sites (MySpace for the first site on my blacklist).
My daughter hated me for months which is perhaps the best recommendation for the software. Her attitude changed when Dateline started televising the “Catch A Predator” series. She appreciated the lock down even more when friends at school started getting sexually explicit invitations to meet “sick people.” One friend from school got in trouble after posting pictures of a party with underage drinking on MySpace.
I uninstalled Optenet last year and told Katie that she was now “free.” No restrictions. She said that she was bored by MySpace now. Apparently that trend came and went during her lock down. She did, however, install AOL instant messaging in a nanosecond.
I trust her … but I still pray that she uses good judgment. Because there are many wicked people still trying to harm our children. Shame on them.
