HOw do you set up a proxy?

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Paithar

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jul 17, 2003
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This is related to another thread started a little bit earlier. I'm curious about something. I know that companies will set up proxies to hinder what sites their employees can go to while at work. I'm wondering if this is something I can set up easily at home?

My pc is in my sig. Also, I connect through a linksys wireless broadband router because I have a laptop that can connect wirelessly. I'm also running WIndows XP Pro SP2.

So, considering my current set up, can I easily set up a proxy? If so, can someone point me in the right direction for doing this?

You see, ultimately I'd rather just be able to monitor exactly where my kids are going on the internet (especially one kid in particular). Even without this, however, I'd love to have a good way of restricting sites that only certain people can go to while others (namely us adults) would have no problems going to. Is there a way with a proxy or otherwise to allow certain people access to certain sites while other people are not allowed to go there?

Thanks in advance.
 
he looks at porn. also, he masturbates 17 times a day.

am i helping?
 
First, what you asked for:

What I do ( for my work place ), is I have squid setup on a linux box to be a transparent proxy. Should the need arrise, I can block certain sites, otherwise I can just look at the logs to see who's viewing what.

Having said that:

As a parent, I understand the desire to monitor and protect the little ones as much as possible, but if they are old enough to be using a computer out of your site, you may just want to just trust their judgement in where they go and what they look at. OR, move the computer to the family room or kitchen ( high traffic location ) if you don't trust them. A proxy will not do much good once the young ones discover it's there and spend any amount of time googling on how to get around it ( unless you really know what you are doing, and then it's just a contest of wills. ).
 
Oh, I understand trusting them and everything. I even have the pc set up by default in our living room. But there's several problems. One is that my wife and I currently work totally different shifts so there is a two hour gap between when I get home and after my wife leaves for work. There are other problems too.

Actually, I trust all of the kids except one. He's almost 12 (just another couple of weeks) and he thinks he's pretty clever (who doesn't when they're that age?). He brags all the time to his older brother and to all of his friends about how he goes to all of these sites with porn and other questionable content.

I know that I could simply go to the browsers history and look providing that he hasn't deleted it. I have done this before for all of the kids and the times that I've looked he was the only one to actually get caught going to these sites. That of course is not to say the other kids don't go there and then delete their tracks.

I want a way of knowing where they are going and ultimately blocking any sites on a per person basis. At least if I could have a more reliable way of knowing what sites they're visiting I could talk to them and tell them why they don't need to be going there.

I don't have a linux box I can just set up, not that I'd know what the heck I was doing anyway if I went that route. So, anybody have any other suggestions?

Thanks.

**Edit** I should probably mention that if his mother ever really believes me about what he's doing she'll probably go ballistic and have me block everything for everybody. This would make not just myself miserable and is therefore not an option as far as I'm concerned. I've told her once and she wasn't happy about it but she didn't really believe me either.
 
If you happen to be behind a router - you can just disable internet during certain times
of the day (my linksys supports this) or if you don't want to be that invasive do a little
bit of research through cookies and webpage history and specifically block out certain
ip's/servers/keywords using a firewall. Am I complicating this? Sure probably. But,
I am stating things that you may want to branch out off of and look up. :)
 
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