Moniter My sons Computer

**Shmockey329** · September 26th, 2012

Needless to say sons can be a pain with technology. i have parental controls set up on the router and on his computer (both of us use ubuntu 12.04 lts) but i know there are ways around those (i tried to test and there are to many ways to block it all). now without being an it expert, while being able to figure out most problems is there anyway to moniter his activity online and off with out physically logging onto it? a program i can install or something of the same genre? mostly just worried about what he gets into on my router my wife works at a bank and im an engineer so we both use vpn's on our work laptops (windows) and would like to add some security/watchdog properties to the device network. Would just like to be able to check on it every once in awhile if you know what i mean. i feel bad for using a distro developed in openness and freedom to lock him down but he is 14 and dosent need to be into stuff like he has been.

Anyhow let me know thanks in advance

**Ubu_Fester** · September 26th, 2012

I am also interested in this.

**Kinstonian** · September 26th, 2012

Here's something from around 2010. How to Create a Family Friendly Ubuntu Setup

There is also DansGuardian, although I've never used any of this.

Keeping the computer in a public place in the house is also a good idea. A hardware keylogger might be useful too.

**Ubu_Fester** · September 27th, 2012

Thanks! I will check those out

**Ubu_Fester** · September 27th, 2012

...And what about some filtering created at the router level?

**Kinstonian** · September 27th, 2012

Originally Posted by Ubu_Fester

...And what about some filtering created at the router level?

Filtering with a network device is good if you want to filter traffic for a bunch of computers because you can centrally manage the filtering. You would probably have to install something like a web proxy like Squid with a blacklist and have traffic go through that server. So if you're dealing with a computer or two, you might be better off installing filtering software on the individual computers.

However, I'm pretty sure OpenDNS has the ability to block certain sites at the DNS level. So you wouldn't have to maintain your own server, you could just configure each computer to use an OpenDNS server.