When I was a teenage boy I thought I had it made because my Aunt and Uncle owned the local movie theater, and that meant that I got a chance to work there, to see all the movies, to hang out with all the other teenagers. It was a small rural town and we only had one theater with one screen. You either watched what was showing that weekend, you went out of town, or you did something other than watching a movie.
When I think back to those days I remember my Uncle Ralph and Aunt Martha Lou working as a team. Martha Lou worked at the ticket window and ruthlessly interrogated young adolescents who were pretending to be younger than they really were so they could get in for $1 rather than $2. Some of the same kids would then turn on a dime and pretend to be older than they were if she expressed concern that they were not old enough to see this weekend's feature. It's amazing how many 14-year-olds can't figure out while standing in line for 10 minutes what years they would have to have been born in to now be either under 12 or over 16.
Once you got past Martha Lou's interrogation, you had to get past Ralph at the front door. Ralph wasn't like Martha Lou. He didn't have any trick questions or quick wit to trip anyone up. Ralph's job was just to guard the bottom line. Armed with just two hands, 10 fingers, and a waist high domed top white trashcan, Ralph made sure you didn't get through that front door without a ticket. He was in business to make money, and no little rug rats were going to fill his seats and watch his movies without getting at least a dollar from them as they came through the door.
To get into that little movie theater, we had to pass through at least two layers of security. Most of us had already had to pass through another layer, convincing our parents that this was a movie worthy of their transporting and funding for us. Though I suspect many didn't care what their kids were watching or doing, as long as we were out of their hair for two or three hours.
When I think back on all those layers of security to get into a movie, a movie that would be very tame by any of today's standards, I'm surprised how little protection many Christians have to protect their computers, their children, and their own hearts from the many maladies of the Internet.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think the Internet is bad, I'm a huge fan. But I know that it is full of hazards. I'm amazed how many Christians bring a computer into their homes, take it out of the box, and just start using it without taking any steps to protect themselves from the hazards associated with the online world.
Their are multiple types of hazards out there. One of the oldest is viruses. Most of us are protected from those when we get a new computer. New machines usually have virus protection software pre-installed. But new viruses are being created all the time, and you have to be diligent to download the latest definitions from your Antivirus (AV) software provider. You wouldn't trust a screen with a 10 inch diameter hole cut in it to keep mosquitoes out of your home. Don't trust outdated AV software. Keep it updated and plug those holes. As a matter of fact, if one AV program is good, two or three is better, right? Unfortunately, no. AV programs tend to cause problems if you run more than one. Choose one carefully considering cost and performance. You can find many reviews online for different programs, and several are even free for home use.
Two more maladies that try to sneak on your computer are spyware and adware. True spyware is the more sinister of the two. A spyware program searches your hard drive for personal data that it can send back to someone who may want to steal your personal, usually financial, information. Adware is somewhat less sinister, but just as aggravating because it is so pervasive. Adware watches to see what kind of information you look for on the Internet, and tries to send you ads, sometimes in the forms of spam, sometimes in the form of popup ads. You can combat the spam with filters and the popups with popup blockers that are included in almost all web browsers like Internet Explorer or Firefox. However, the real hassle from both spyware and adware are that they become so numerous, and before you know it you have dozens of hidden programs running in the background on your computer, doing absolutely nothing for you, and all the while taxing the resources of your computer to the point where you just about can't even use it anymore.
The good news is that unlike AV programs, you can safely use more than one AntiSpyware (AS) program at a time. I use four, Adaware, Spybot Search and Destroy, Spyware Blaster, and Windows Defender. All four of these are available as free downloads on the Internet. Microsoft will require you to validate that you are running a legal copy of Windows XP or Vista before allowing you to download Defender. Like AV software, AntiSpyware software requires being regularly updated to be effective. Keep plugging those holes.
Many technically savvy Christians are effectively using AntiVirus and AntiSpyware software. They are reasonably safe from these maladies. They have even protected themselves from other hazards I haven't mentioned like email scams, phishing, spoof sites, and wi-fi piggy backers. But I'm amazed how many don't have any kind of filter on the actual content of the material that makes it's way on to their computer monitors, through their eyes, and into their hearts and minds. Their are several reasons Christians don't filter Internet content.
- They think adding a filter is too much trouble.
- They think USING a filter is too much trouble. It blocks too much legitimate content.
- The filters they have looked at cost too much money.
- They think they are mature and disciplined enough to avoid the "naughty" sites, so they don't need a filter.
I'm now on my third filtering solution, and I've never been happier with my choice. The first was a free filter that was offered by crosswalk.com. It required using their servers as a proxy, or go between, to get to the pages on the web. It was effective, but blocked too much legitimate content. Still, I was happy using it until crosswalk decided not to support it anymore. They recommended a filter by Be Safe Online. This was my least favorite of the three. It was a paid service. Sixty dollars bought me a year's worth of protection for up to three computers. But it was a program that had to be downloaded and installed on each computer. It was prone to the same problems as any other program. Have you ever had Internet Explorer or Microsoft Word lock up on you in the middle of a project. If you are lucky you can close them and restart them without having to shut down and restart your computer. Well, the Be Safe Online program would sometimes malfunction, and it was set up in such a way that if it didn't work, you couldn't get on the Internet at all. I still used it for two years, but after a while it got to the point where it was consistently knocking me and my family completely off the Internet. It became too troublesome to be a practical solution anymore.
Then along came a service called OpenDNS. The neat thing about this service is that it didn't start out to be an filter at all. It started out to just be a very good DNS service. What's that? That's Geek to you? Sorry. DNS stands for Domain Name Service. It it's simplest form, it's a phone book for all the computers on the web. It helps your computer find web pages, helps you send emails to the right places, both those web pages and emails to find their ways back to your computer. Every computer on the Internet has a number to identify it. Some use the same number all the time, some use a different number every time they go on the Internet. When you type an address like www.blogger.com, your computer has to look up the phone number for that computer. OK, it's not really a phone number, It's called an IP address. And instead of looking like 555-555-1212 it looks more like 192.168.1.215. If you wanted to call a friend and didn't know his number, you could look it up in the telephone book or call directory assistance. If your computer wants to know where to send a request for www.blogger.com it looks up the IP address on a Domain Name Server, a big computer that matches addresses like www.blogger.com with numbers like 192.168.1.215. (No, that's not the actual address for blogger, or any other computer on the Internet).
Most of our computers look up IP addresses from Domain Name Servers operated by the company we get our Internet Service from, our Internet Service Provider, or ISP. But many ISP Domain Name Servers are slow and unreliable in providing the service, resulting in slow and frustrating Internet navigation. OpenDNS built an independent network of DNS servers that provide these IP addresses quickly and reliably. They make their money like Yahoo! or Google, by showing you ads when you request an address that doesn't exist. So if you asked for www.bloggger.com you would see their ads. I started using this service just to speed up my Internet experience. I noticed a mild improvement, but nothing to write a big long blog entry about.
But then something wonderful happened. OpenDNS began offering adult filtering. It works like this. You open a free account with OpenDNS, and let them know what IP address(es) you will be connecting from. You configure your computer, your router, or both, to use the OpenDNS service instead of your ISP's service. Then you tell them what type of content you want to filter. Then when OpenDNS gets a request from YOUR IP address for the IP address of www.exampleadultsite.com, instead of sending the correct IP address back, it sends back an IP address of a page that let's whoever is using your computer know that site is blocked from your network. I love this service because:
- It's free.
- I didn't have to download any software.
- Since there is no program running on my computer, I don't have to worry about it freezing up or interfering with other programs.
- It's free.
- If it blocks legitimate sites, which hasn't seemed to be a problem so far, I can add them to my "whitelist" and allow them.
- If there is a particular site that isn't blocked, but that I want to block, I can add it to my blacklist. This is useful for that site that isn't pornographic, but is distracting your kid from doing his homework.
- Did I mention it's free?
- It blocks proxy sites, that are used by many teenagers to bypass Internet filters.
It's not foolproof. If someone in your home happens to already KNOW the IP address of a site,. then they could just enter 192.168.1.215 in the address bar instead of entering www.blogger.com. But the human brain has a much harder time remembering numbers than names. That's why you can't even remember your mother's phone number any more without checking the list in your cell phone. There are a few sites on the Internet that will let someone manually look up the IP address for a particular site name. As I find these, I'm adding them to my blacklist. I'm hoping that OpenDNS will soon add them to the list of blocked proxy sites.
Check out OpenDNS.com. The directions for setting up your computer or network to use their services are easy to follow, but will require using an administrator account on your computer. This is not an ad. I don't have stock in the company, and I'm not being paid for an endorsement. I'm just a satisfied customer. I'm also a pastor who is concerned about Christians letting evil into their homes via the Internet, and I think this is a great way to stop it.
