Pr0n blocking/filtering tools?

[Snake]

Hey guys,

Don't know how to word this.

I know that there are tons of tools out there that can block and/or filter porn sites/pics and movies, but is there one that will do it with stealth? I'd like to install something to do this, but I don't want to alarm the person who is looking at it (hence the stealth part) - I want to avoid his embarrassment at all costs

So is there something that will work in the background and not let him know it's there and not able to find it to shut it off?


--Snake

[Galen]

Alas, the only tools I could recommend in good conscience would set off an extremely loud "porn siren".  :

[monkey0506]

About the only thing I can think of to tell you would be to have your ISP set up a firewall on their end. Anything running on the user-end computer can be shut off if the user really wants to and has any idea how computers work. 8)

[dasjoe]

add the sites the person visits to your hosts file and direct them to somewhere else, i suggest to 127.0.0.1

[Snake]

Dasjoe, very interesting. How would I go about doing that?

See, something like that is what I was looking for. Some sort of tool, the only thing I could think of, that would make porn show up as a 404 error messege or something.

Oh, and yeah, a porn siren going off would be the balls

--EDIT--
If this helps my initial question to Das, I'm using Opera ver9.25...


--Snake

[RickJ]

My LinkSys Wireless-G Router allows me to block 4 URLs and/or websites containing any of six keywords.  I'm not sure if the 4 URLs can contain wild cards or not.   You can have up to ten different access restrictions such as this and enable them at specific times/days, etc.   I think you could have all ten active all the time so that would give you something like 40 urls that are blocked or any websites containing any of 60 keywords.   You can also block specific PCs, so if the other person is doing this from a specific PC you can also focus in on that as well.  Since this is all in the router and password protected it would be pretty difficult to hack.   

When I first read the subject of this post I wondered to myself if you were asking for a band pass filter or a band reject filter.   

PS:  If you don't have a router you could probably find on for around 50 bucks.   

[dasjoe]

i assume you're on windows xp, with windows in "C:\Windows\" and know the sites the person visits.

navigate to "C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\", open the "hosts" file in your favourite text editor. notepad works fine.

add a line to the bottom of the file, make it look like this:

Code: ags

127.0.0.1	youtube.com
127.0.0.1	www.youtube.com

this doesn't work when you don't know the specific sites, though.
fixing that would be a trickier, as you'd either need a router or proxy server.

fun way to do it would be flipping the images upside down, see http://www.ex-parrot.com/pete/upside-down-ternet.html

[Radiant]

Dasjoe, very interesting. How would I go about doing that?

The technical answer is, you edit C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts and at the bottom add such lines as

Code: ags

127.0.0.1       ad.doubleclick.net

Depending on your system, it may be necessary to close and re-open your browser, or even reboot your computer, after saving that. This will block one of those many many advertising sites. The advantage is that trying to look at the site will give a 404 page not found error.

The practical answer is, you don't. The reason is, you're doing what is known as "enumerating badness" - i.e. this approach would only work if you had a list of every single porn site in the world, and added that to your hosts file. This is, to but it mildly, impossible. A google search for "sex" turns up approximately 700 million sites, and while I haven't checked all of those a good bet is that the majority of them is porn.

A better way would be to get one of the several "content blockers" (generally these filter pages for certain keywords, and refuse to display the page. The disadvantage is that this generally gives a "this page has been blocked!!1!" warning.

As with the above, this doesn't actually have a 100% success rate, and it has the added problem of getting a serious amount of false positives. For instance, you might not be able to visit a site referring to the "presidential couple" (since, you know, couple means sex), nor to see sites about roosters, or people named Richard.

[InCreator]

Why block porn, anyway? It's not like blocking would save anyone from hell or something.

Give it a thought, snake. Why would you want to do this?

[Snake]

InCreator:
The reason for this is because he doesn't understand that by clicking all over the place in these sites while clicking yes to everything he sees without reading anything can ultimately lead to virus', which he's caused before and costed us money. We have talked to him about it once and the activity had slowed down, but now yesterday I've found it's worse than what it was before.

I understand and agree that the better way to go about this would be to talk to him, but on the other hand, I know what it was like to be his age. He's not going to be scarred by looking at porn, jesus christ, I'm no saint and never was, but I also know how it feels to be confronted about such things as porno by a parent. You get that gut-wrenching, oh shit feeling and immediately get defensive and increasingly embarrassed. I don't want to do that to him.

I know of a few specific sites that he visits so those I'll block my best. I'd like some control over censorship, he doesn't need full reigns.

Like I said, I don't think it's "evil" that he's looking at porn ( : ), it's totally natural and a part of him growing up - I actually laughed when I saw all the sites in his history folder.

My goal isn't to block every site out there, of course it would be impossible.
And now that I saw that link that Das gave me it made me laugh and think that is another way to go about it.

Can someone explain to me what "127.0.0.1" means? Is that an IP address? What are some others that I can use?

When I first read the subject of this post I wondered to myself if you were asking for a band pass filter or a band reject filter.

Haha, that'll be the next question

EDIT:
I keep forgetting to say that I've tried the hosts thing yesterday and it did infact work after restarting. And Das, you assumed right, I am on WinXP.


--Snake

[Nacho]

Why blocking the porn?!?

[zabnat]

127.0.0.1 is ip address of localhost.

I don't think it is possible to filter porn transparently (in any reasonable way), so I would look into other options, like using some visible blocking program. If he's capable to go around that kind of program, he should be wise enough to be taught about proper secure way to browse the internets.

[nihilyst]

He's probably witty enough to understand what's going on, when all of a sudden all the pr0n sites aren't accessible anymore. So why not go the direct way of using a visible blocking program ...

[InCreator]

...and making up an excuse, like "this porn site(s) keeps turning up on screen, and installs a virus, this program will block those..."

[Rincew1nd]

Nothing like 10 pop ups on screen of smut  :

[Galen]

Disable crap like active X and javascript.
That'd stop most installer type crap I would think. Also install and antivirus and ad aware/spyware search and destroy.

[Nikolas]

Teach him the "good" porn sites...

I can recomend a few if needed!

[Snake]

lol! So could I

Thank you everybody for your input,


--Snake

[Galen]

Make the porn sites redirect to a goatse or similar. He'll instantly become disinterested in porn for years or atleast a few hours.

[MrColossal]

But he might immediately become interested in distended anuses...

It's tricky!