Firewall, Virus Protection, & Kid Protection Software for Home Devices?
October 6, 2016 10:24 AM   Subscribe

I am what passes for the IT person for my household. I am not qualified. We have a couple home PCs (windows 7 & 8), a couple iPads, and some Kindle Fires. At the moment, I have no up-to-date anti-virus software, no programs to keep my kids from looking at inappropriate stuff, and no firewall software. What should I have installed on the PCs? Are their apps I should have on the devices? Are there other things I should be doing?

My main goals are to keep limit the chance a virus messes up our stuff (or facilitates stealing of our info) and try (and I know I can only try) to keep the kids from looking at something really violent or more sexual than is appropriate for their ages (10, 8, and 5). Mostly, I try to keep track of the kids by limiting their time and looking over their shoulders, but I think some content limitation software could be a good supplement.
posted by Alluring Mouthbreather to Computers & Internet (7 answers total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
check to see if your internet service provider offers free virus protection. I know Comcast offers Norton and AT&T offers McAfee. They come built in with a firewall.

Otherwise I'd pay for a premium subscription to Malwarebyes (and i'd run the free version on all your machines if your ISP does offer virus protection anyways)

Make sure you're not using internet explorer, but Firefox or Chrome and download the uBlock Origin plugin for them. This is an ad blocker. Advertisements are a one-way ticket to malwareville.

I can't help too much with the parental control stuff. I do know that the ipads and kindle should come with some basic options, so make sure you click through those. Also make sure that the PC is in the common areas of the house, so it's easier to keep an eye on them.
posted by INFJ at 10:34 AM on October 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


for virus/security purposes, make sure no one (including you!) is running as administrator on the windows machines. have a separate account that is used only for installing software.

the only way to fully block kids out of stuff is to install software that allows you to white-list sites or applications. there are some basic built-in tools in most devices

windows 7/8 has parental control settings. setup for win 7 is described here.

kindle fires has parental controls under 'kindle freetime'- i found this link that talks about it for one generation of fire.

ipad parental controls are described here.

if you don't want to configure each device, there are wireless routers that you can buy that allow you to do some higher level parental controls but they're not going to lock things down as tightly.
posted by noloveforned at 11:37 AM on October 6, 2016


AdBlock Plus and Ghostery can be installed on Firefox and Chrome, I believe. Avoid Internet Explorer/Edge at all costs. In Windows 7, there is a feature called Parental Controls that can help you set your browser(s) for the experience you want the kiddos to have while on the internet.
posted by Lynsey at 11:49 AM on October 6, 2016


Chromebook or Chromebox for the kids. Locking down a Windows system is tricky and in my experience kids will often figure out ways to do things that can lead to infections.

ChromeOS is not invincible to malware but for your purposes it's close enough.
posted by Candleman at 11:55 AM on October 6, 2016


limit the chance a virus messes up our stuff
Another thing to think about is a back up system for the irreplaceable stuff. Music and other similar media can be replaced. Pictures can't be unless they are copied elsewhere. Google Photos and Flickr both let you back up automatically from mobile devices over wifi. Amazon Cloud storage is also free if you are a prime member and there are probably many other places.
posted by soelo at 12:34 PM on October 6, 2016


You could buy a router (like the Netgear) series that supports the OpenDNS Family Shield service.

I have an R7000 and can specifiy on a per-device basis which devices use the filter. It's at the DNS level inside the router, so the kids can't turn it off without getting into the router configuration. I've seen most other things get bypassed, crashed, or figured out by very clever kids.
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:35 PM on October 6, 2016


no programs to keep my kids from looking at inappropriate stuff

Apropos of your terminology, once when my son was that age, I took a glance at his recent search history. One of his search terms was "inappropriate stuff"!
posted by JimN2TAW at 12:45 PM on October 6, 2016 [6 favorites]


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