In order to become more competent in issues of filtering, I
had my husband walk me through what he has set up both to keep our computers
secure and how to filter them. He started with a tour of the basement, with our
modem and wi fi. He explained that once he attached the computer directly to
the modem and immediately had spammers from China try to infiltrate the
computer. They were able to do this because the IP address was public, whereas
if the computer was connected to the wi fi the information was private and not
as easy to infiltrate. We also went through both the security and filtering
programs on my laptop, and I changed the setting on my laptop so that I would
be warned of objectionable material instead of being blocked. (Before pages
would be blocked at very random times, such as leaving comments on people’s
posts.) Then, he helped me get
password safe set up, so that I had a way to
generate and keep track of stronger passwords. Lastly (and he gets bonus points
for this), he wrote some of his other thoughts, so that both I and you would
have it. They follow (by the way, hubby’s name is Matthew Fisher and he did
give permission to share this):
Our internet
connection involves cable internet service, a cable modem, a wireless router,
and software firewalls. In addition to this, we use a security software suite,
a password manager, and content filtering.
The filtering actually
begins with our router, which acts as a form of hardware firewall, and helps to
make our internet connection more secure. A lot of modems feature built-in
routers. In our case, the cable modem and the wireless router are two separate
pieces of hardware.
The following article
briefly explains how a router works, what the difference is between hardware
and software firewalls, and why it's good to have both types of firewall.
By default, our router
does not do any "port forwarding". This means that the world at large
can see our modem's public IP address, but cannot initiate any communication
with our computers' private IP addresses. What this boils down to is that some
guy in China can't probe our computers for open ports.
If you've enabled port
forwarding on your router, please Google the term "packet filter",
and give some very serious thought to configuring packet filtering on your
computer.
Firewalls and packet
filters can only do so much. When we use a web browser to access a website, we
are by definition giving the computer on the other end permission to send us
something. If the other computer is compromised, what we receive back could be
malware (malicious software). We can also receive malware in the form of email
attachments.
This is why it's good
to have a virus scanner. Most virus scanner vendors sell comprehensive security
packages, which also include blocking websites with known security risks,
scanning email attachments, etc.
There's some
disagreement about whether computers running OS X or Linux need to have a virus
scanner. The following short article explains that in fact it is a prudent
measure, if only to protect the people with whom you share files:
The same could also be
said for iPhones, iPads, Androids, etc. But in practice, who runs a virus
scanner on their mobile devices? Who thinks about the bizarrely unrestrained
security privileges that apps demand when you install them?
That's such a mess
that all I can do is move on to another topic.
A basic security
measure that is often overlooked is to use good "password hygiene".
In other words, use strong passwords, use a different password for each account,
and periodically change all of your passwords.
Reality check: There
is no way that a normal person could possibly remember dozens of constantly
changing strong passwords. This is where a password management program like
Password Safe comes in.
Password Safe makes it
very easy for you to generate, store, and retrieve a different strong password
for each of your accounts. The password database itself is password-protected,
but you only have to remember that one password. For further information about Password
Safe, see:
Another aspect of our
computer setup is content filtering. A few free tools that can be helpful for
content filtering are:
- Google's safety
tools like Safe Search, and YouTube's Safety Mode:
- The parental
controls in Microsoft Windows:
- Additional internet
filtering software such as K9, NetNanny, etc. (which we don't currently use)
Safe Search and Safety
Mode are not just for children -- and in fact they're not robust enough to be
used as serious parental controls. Basically they're just ways of opting into a
more disciplined approach to search results.
If you use the
internet for work or education, you'll find that Safe Search can remove a lot
of "noise" that tends to distract and coarsen us. Similarly, Safety
Mode can suppress comment streams and videos on YouTube that our better selves
would have no interest in seeing. Both features are easily toggled on and off.
The horror that is
internet advertising speaks for itself. One very effective means of controlling
all sorts of ads is to install Adblock Plus:
The amount of
unsolicited crud that Adblock Plus eliminates is amazing.
Later this week, I’ll have to go through some of the
computers we have and make sure they’re all appropriately set up (embarrassed
to say we have five, some mac some non), play with the password safe, and
Adblock.
This has been on the computer set up side of things, which I
thought good to explore this week. On the children side, I have been fairly
cautious in what they are allowed to do and have been slowly getting them into
the digital world. Computers are kept in public spaces, and computer time is
regulated. They are only allowed to go on sites they have permission to go on, unless
they ask specifically to do a search. With younger children, I sit down with them
for a search, but my 10 and 12 year old look things up on their own. The main
things we have talked about are what to do if you see something weird (turn it
off and tell me) and the importance of respecting copyright (huge issue as I
have creators). My older two are fairly involved in
Scratch and so have had a
multitude of questions about how to handle various social situations online. My
younger children have played with Scratch a bit, but not to the point that they
have really engaged with the social part of it. With my eight year old, I don’t
know if she is too young, or just not interested. I am wondering if something
like
youngzine.org would be an attractive place where she could make online
contributions, and I could work with her on discussing digital citizenship. (Although
the environments are different, scratch has moderators that help you when you
need it, youngzine moderates every comment before it is posted. This makes it a
very safe starting ground, but doesn’t give the same level of practice dealing
with conflict. I have been very happy that scratch has provided a little bit of
exposure to conflict without being over the top).
This is a link a classroom project (not mine) in which sixth
graders made scratch projects which demonstrated some aspect of digital
citizenship, thought it would be fun to share:
http://scratch.mit.edu/studios/437627/
I clearly have more work to do in thinking what it really
means to be a digital citizen and passing that on to my kids. I am on the
lookout for simple sources on what material should be covered with kids and
places on the internet that serve as useful training grounds. I would love to
hear what other people have come up with!
Resources
