[lug] monitoring kids

[Glenn Murray]

Hi Davide,

As your subject line is "monitoring kids", I would respectfully point out
that
you may be asking on the wrong list.  You don't say how old your kids are,
or
what specifically you fear, but this is a parenting problem, not a
technology
problem.

That said, I see that the MG7540 user manual has six pages on parental
controls.  For my kids, for a few years, I found it useful to restrict
device
access to certain hours.  White lists, black lists, whatever, you will not
be
in control for very long.  Once they get a phone it's all over.

There is a sure solution.  My wife teaches at an orthodox Jewish girls
school,
and many of these girls are kept "safe" by not having any access to any
internet, ever, not to mention being forbidden to speak to non-family males
in
private.  Works like a charm.

Cheers,
Glenn

On Thu, May 7, 2020 at 6:48 PM Alan Robertson <alanr at unix.sh> wrote:

> OpenDNS provides a filtering DNS service - with dozens of filterable
> categories. It works well.
>
> On Tue, May 5, 2020, at 6:06 PM, Zan Lynx wrote:
> > On 5/5/2020 11:38 AM, Davide Del Vento wrote:
> > > Folks,
> > >
> > > For the series better late than never, I would like to track my kids
> use
> > > of their computers which is supposedly be only "school" and for
> obvious
> > > reasons has skyrocketed to a large amount of time.
> > >
> > > The first kid works on a Linux box, where I am root and the kid is
> not,
> > > so that may be easy. The second one has a BVSD-provided chromebook
> where
> > > I don't even have an account (as far as I know) but I could "kindly
> ask"
> > > the kid to lend me the machine so I can make sure everything is safe
> an
> > > up to date. Alternatively, I could do something on the modem-router,
> > > which is a combined device made by Motorola, model MG7540. At this
> point
> > > I would only know where they are spending their time, not necessarily
> > > block things (yet?)
> > >
> > > I have no idea where to start for any of the three options. I fear
> both
> > > https://xkcd.com/1445/ <https://xkcd.com/1445/> (or equivalently
> > > https://xkcd.com/1801/ <https://xkcd.com/1801/>) as well as not
> > > considering an option which may be the best one, simply because I do
> not
> > > know about it. Any insight or suggestion?
> >
> > The very simplest, but also easy to evade, is to replace the local DNS
> > lookup server with one of your own, set to log all of the lookups.
> >
> > I believe many people use a Raspberry Pi for this but anything will work
> > really. I have seen it done with OpenWRT so if you want to get a new
> > WiFi router and use that it would work too. I think that was someone
> > else's suggestion already.
> >
> > Anyway, set up the DNS server for logging, set a network log target to a
> > remote syslog destination (rsyslog can do it), set the DHCP server
> > (probably on your router) to use that DNS and let it rip.
> >
> > That lets you see the names of the sites they look up. Easy to bypass if
> > they explicitly set their own DNS or use the web browser settings to use
> > a HTTPS DNS.
> >
> > Way up there in difficulty is setting up your own SSL intercept proxy
> > and using a firewall to deny any traffic it can't read.
> >
> > --
> >                  Knowledge is Power -- Power Corrupts
> >                          Study Hard -- Be Evil
> > _______________________________________________
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>
> --
>   Alan Robertson
>   alanr at unix.sh
> _______________________________________________
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