Free Internet Filter

For almost 2 years, our family has used Blue Coat K9 Web protection as our web filter.  It has provided both protection and accountability.   It’s filters protect us from both spyware and inappropriate sites.  When it detects a “problem” site, a screen will come up telling you the type of site it has detected.  My husband knows half of our password, and I know the other half.  Only on a few rare occasions did it mis-detect a site (it thought a coupon site was spyware.)

You can download their free web protection here.

Here’s what their site says:

Blue Coat® K9 Web Protection is a content filtering solution for your home computer. Its job is to provide you with a family-safe Internet experience, where YOU control the Internet content that enters your home. K9 Web Protection implements the same enterprise-class Web filtering technology used by Blue Coat’s Fortune 500 customers around the world, wrapped in simple, friendly, and reliable software for your Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Vista computer.

Some of the features:

• Time Restrictions

K9 Web Protection enables you to restrict the time of day users can access Web sites. If there are specific times when you do and do not want your family accessing the Web, this feature assists you in enforcing that policy.

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• Web Site Exceptions

In addition to the defined and custom protection levels, K9 Web Protection allows you to explicitly block or allow access to specific Web sites. For example, K9 is blocking a site, but you want to allow access to it, but not any others in the category.

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• Blocking Effects

K9 Web Protection offers an audible feature in which the application plays a bark when a user attempts to access a blocked site. This feature is useful to alert a parent, teacher, or other care provider that someone under his or her supervision might be stumbling onto offensive or inappropriate content.

K9 also enables Time Out Settings. If a user attempts to visit too many blocked sites in a specified period of time, K9 completely blocks access to the Web for a specified time.

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• URL Keywords

K9 Web Protection allows you to block access to Web pages based on keywords in the Web page URL. You can, for example, block any Web page that has the word sex in the URL.

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• Web Search Options

K9 Web Protection offers the option of enforcing the use of Google SafeSearch, which diminishes the amount of adult material that might be returned as a result of an Internet search. This feature is enabled by default. Currently, K9 Web Protection supports the safe search functionality of the Google Search Engine only.

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K9 Web Protection allows you to view reports of all Internet browsing activity and administrative actions.

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