Just found out my young son, 12, has been googling things such as naked women etc (this was after I confronted my husband about it-oops)..Had the "discussion" with my son, but I'm wondering if there are "parental controls" on the computer and where do I look.. I must say I was quite surprised at my find, but know he "learns" alot of things from school etc..

We pay for a service through BSafeOnline. I don't have anything blocked at all - it became too much of a nuisance because so many benign things that the kids legitimately needed access to required me to enter the password for them to view. I appreciated the high level of scrutiny, but also wanted the kids to learn to exercise some good judgment.

We currently have it email us a list of websites visited on our various computers each week. If I see anything suspicious I can visit that page and see if there is truly cause for concern. This list is saved on the BSafeOnline server and not just in the browsing history in the computer, which could easily be altered by a user at the computer. BSafe monitors exactly where that computer 'goes' on the web.

When the kids are older, I"ll have something. Right now, I have parental controls set through my anti virus so if you search on "naked" it won't work for you. It can sometimes block legitmate sites that I would use but so far, nothing the kids would use.

Also, it's important that your computer is in a family area like the living room and you have access to and/or watch your child as they are on it. My son is 10 and I haven't allowed him to "google" anything yet. He is just allowed to play games on certain pre-screened sites that don't allow chat. I do know he goes to friends houses that don't have the same rules. You just have to keep communication lines open and discuss freely. We don't allow rated M video games for the kids but my son openly told me he played one yesterday at someone's house...sigh. I was glad he shared because we discuss why it was Mature (his thoughts about it).

I know about NetNanny but haven't used anything other than anti virus stuff at this point

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