[Swansea Hackspace] Home Internet Filter

[phantomjinx]

I actually looked into this in some detail about 6 months ago.

I started off with the idea of using my currently unused Pi for this purpose.

My initial considerations was for a transparent proxy that would route traffic by default rather
than having to change IP settings on each machine. However, that led me to the next question of
setting the Pi as each machine's gateway rather than the router, in that if I can set the proxy one
way then the kids could set it to the router and 'hide' their activity. It may seem overly paranoid
but then I know what I would have done in the same situation!

To avoid, the whole IP settings config question, I then considered getting my router to mirror
packets to the Pi as they were being routed. That way I could log them by default. Unfortunately,
this functionality was not available on my router (billion 7800N) as its iptables implementation
seemed to be too old. So, then came to the idea of a new router running custom firemware.
Unfortunately, never got much further than that.

In the end, I kinda lost heart in the whole idea since if it was this difficult to make it foolproof
then I really would not be trusting my kids. Maybe, I would try things without and keep an active
eye on their internet use - again not foolproof either but can still look into at later date.

Apologies, this is not the solution you are looking for but may give you some further points to
consider.

PGR

On 27/03/16 20:13, Richard Morgan wrote:
> Very insightful Neil, thanks for the response.
> 
> I'm less keen on the BT Parental Controls for the exact reasons you highlight, and would prefer
> something more open source and configurable in terms of what is filtered out if possible.
> 
> I do have a couple of Raspberry Pi computers I could use for this so a solution that runs on RPi
> would be nice but not a must have.
> 
> Thanks again,
> 
> Richard
> 
> On Sun, 27 Mar 2016 at 15:00, Neil Jones <neil at aurinia.co.uk <mailto:neil at aurinia.co.uk>> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>     On 26/03/16 17:41, Richard Morgan wrote:
>>     Hi All,
>>     What do you use for filtering your home internet for children?
>>
>>     There is BT Parental Controls if you're using infinity broadband but I've also seen examples
>>     using Raspberry Pi as a proxy running Squid/Squidguard.
> 
>     You've not had a lot of answers, but can I suggest investigating the problem a bit further.
>     What does BT filter? Researching it shows that it i domain based. That at least is better than
>     local councils who in the web filtering for librariesand their email systems use a very stupid
>     word based system.
> 
>     However, BT's filter is made by another company and therein may lie a problem. A lot of these
>     things are driven by American bigots who want their children protected from all sorts of
>     harmless things, Evolution is one of those so just about any decent and harmless biology site is
>     going to be off limits. If you have any doubts about this check any American forum. I am
>     currently receiving postings from young earth creationists, racists, homophobes and genocide
>     deniers.
> 
>     Those of you who have been members of the local Linux User Group will remember Rhys Sage AKA
>     "Secret Agent Sage" who went off to America and managed to
>     find one of these rednecks willing to marry him. He caused an uproar on that list by posting
>     bigoted stuff which is only too common in the USA.
>     So before getting any filtering system I would actually find if it is tailored to British values
>     not the those of the American Kristian Koalition Klan.
> 
>     Then there is the problem that any intelligent child can bypass the filters anyway with the
>     likes of Tor etc.
> 
> 
>     Neil
> 
>>
>>     Can anyone suggest a solution that's configurable and manageable remotely please? Thanks.
>>
>>     Happy Easter all,
>>
>>     Richard
>>
>>
>>     -- 
>>     Kind regards,
>>
>>     Richard
>>
>>
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> 
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-- 
Paul Richardson

  * p.g.richardson at phantomjinx.co.uk
  * p.g.richardson at redhat.com
  * pgrichardson at linux.com

"I know exactly who reads the papers ...

  * The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country.
  * The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country.
  * The Times is read by people who do actually run the country.
  * The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country.
  * The Financial Times is read by the people who own the country.
  * The Morning Star is read by the people who think the country ought to be run by another country.
  * The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who think it is."

Jim Hacker, Yes Minister


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