Internet Controls

[Guest ShaQuaNew]

My daughter Sarah is a wonderful young lady; intelligent, caring, and respectful. She is like most teenagers in that she likes to spend a lot of time on the internet either chatting with friends, or downloading songs, etc.

 

I've done my best to inform her of the dangers in both the people that are out there, but also the malware, spyware, trojans, and pups that can crash the computer. As you might expect, she spends a lot of time on Chinese sites. Many of these sites have been the source of browser hijackers, spyware, and other unfriendly stuff from which I've rescued her on several occasions. The first couple of times cleaning her system was just Dad being Dad, now it's getting old.

 

She has become infected again, with what, I don't yet know because she's pretty protective about her personal space, and I respect that. This time, I'm planning to install some protective software (like Net Nanny), that will limit her surfing ability, but protect the system. Was hoping to get some feedback from others with experience in this area.

 

[tywy_99]

I've been faced with the same dilemma, Jesse. But all has been quiet on that front lately, TG.

My wife runs Norton antivirus all the time to clean up her computer that she shares with her daughter.

The problem I've been facing lately is her daughter using up all the downlaod bytes I'm alloted. When she surpasses 425 MG, the browsing speed is gone for 24 hours. I can't do anything. I have a router running off my tower where they can access the internet. I looked all over for some way to control the downlaod usage but to no avail. I finally gave up. My wife has mentioned it to her daughter and she has gotten better about not using it all up. KIDS~!.....what is one to do?

[Guest ShaQuaNew]

I've been faced with the same dilemma, Jesse. But all has been quiet on that front lately, TG.

My wife runs Norton antivirus all the time to clean up her computer that she shares with her daughter.

The problem I've been facing lately is her daughter using up all the downlaod bytes I'm alloted. When she surpasses 425 MG, the browsing speed is gone for 24 hours. I can't do anything. I have a router running off my tower where they can access the internet. I looked all over for some way to control the downlaod usage but to no avail. I finally gave up. My wife has mentioned it to her daughter and she has gotten better about not using it all up. KIDS~!.....what is one to do?

 

I understand completely. I can always tell when Sarah is downloading a movie

 

Lan and I share the same computer, so it's easy for me to keep an eye on it. Sarah has her own, so I don't see what's going on with it until she tells me there is a problem.

 

To her credit, she tries to be careful, but gets easily infected by making bad click choices. A previous infection had disabled both McAffee and Spyware Doctor, and hijacked the browser. It took me hours to find that the Winsock had been infected. From there I could get back to browse and complete the cleaning.

 

I had to delicately mention my thought of installing Net Nanny on Sarah's computer, because Mom is Mom, and quite protective of daughter.

[david_dawei]

I lean towards just getting the right protective tools on the computer rather than try to restrict/control her. Let her discover some mistakes for herself.. Once my wife lost her harddrive content, she was more serious about allowing more protective tools on.

 

I use a combination of an anti-virus, SpyDoctor, and Ad-Aware 2007 (the paid version with Ad-watch). So far, on both our computers this is doing well.

[Don]

 

She has become infected again, with what, I don't yet know because she's pretty protective about her personal space, and I respect that. This time, I'm planning to install some protective software (like Net Nanny), that will limit her surfing ability, but protect the system. Was hoping to get some feedback from others with experience in this area.

 

 

I doubt net nanny will help much for chinese sites. One of the main functions of net nanny is to restrict the sites you can visit, they use a blacklist. The blacklist probably is not very good for chinese sites. I think you should go with a big security suite like Norton or Zonealarm. You can buy these suites for 2 or 3 computer installations and most now include the capability for you to control settings from one master computer. You can turn up the settings and control some of them from you machine. Thus, they can not turn down the controls. Many kids hate the questions from the software, so they turn them off. Of course the questions are important since they are detecting bad behanvoir from a program. You should enforce good computer safety, but not try to control every detail. Like put locks ont he door, but do not try to determine every book she reads. After she looses everything, mabye she will listen. Plus, make her learn how to do some of the fixing. Just keep an install disk for the operating system and do a fresh install everytime.

[jim_julian]

My wife has been using an old Mac as "her" computer for about 18 months now. She really is not an intensive user. Most of her time is on Skype, which is not high risk.

 

My daughter has had a new Mac laptop for about two months now. Like many her age, she is constantly on the Internet. She frequents Chinese sites that would be considered high risk.

 

I have been visiting Chinese sites for almost three years but these have mostly been English variants. I have both a Mac and a PC and I avoid using the PC in any risk environment. (Actually I try to avoid using it any time!)

 

We have detected zero problems with malware of any kind. I get tons of Chinese spam e-mail but that is easily filtered.

 

The girls had no problem transitioning from XP to Mac OS ... to me the solution is clear ...

[Guest ShaQuaNew]

We have detected zero problems with malware of any kind. I get tons of Chinese spam e-mail but that is easily filtered.

 

The girls had no problem transitioning from XP to Mac OS ... to me the solution is clear ...

 

Interesting Mac perspective. I've not heard that before. I really don't want to restrict her movements, but I do want to prevent her from getting infected. She learns fast, but prefers to learn herself as opposed to me showing her. Matter of fact, if I start to show her something, after about ten seconds she says she's got it and knows. LOL.

 

She's been browser hijacked at least three times, and had numerous malicious artifacts maliciously installed in the registry and obscure locations on the hard drive. Cleaning is a nightmare. Ideally, having something prevent the hijacking, plus keep the system clean. Maybe it's time to switch from McAffee to Kaspersky.

[Randy W]

 

Interesting Mac perspective. I've not heard that before. I really don't want to restrict her movements, but I do want to prevent her from getting infected. She learns fast, but prefers to learn herself as opposed to me showing her. Matter of fact, if I start to show her something, after about ten seconds she says she's got it and knows. LOL.

 

She's been browser hijacked at least three times, and had numerous malicious artifacts maliciously installed in the registry and obscure locations on the hard drive. Cleaning is a nightmare. Ideally, having something prevent the hijacking, plus keep the system clean. Maybe it's time to switch from McAffee to Kaspersky.

 

 

What I did was to first check the browser add-ons (under Tools - Add-ons).

 

QQ installs several directories - i think they're called TenCent, QQ..., and ZComprdiv. Go in and replace any executables, and the important dll's (like yok.exe, ZCom*.exe, TSUpdater.exe, TT*.exe, QQ*.exe, QQ*.dll) with non-executable text files and make them read-only and hidden. You can make these directories read-only and hidden as well. This will prevent QQ from repairing any of these files.

 

Jim always wins these discussions.

[Randy W]

. . . and DO NOT download or install qqplay.exe.

[Guest Rob & Jin]

. . . and DO NOT download or install qqplay.exe.

 

QQ is a nightmare for viruses and Trojan's even with chinese firewalls and virus protection.