IE6 Lockdown

uch

anybody know of any easy tools for locking down IE6 on my Home PC so I can restrict what the kids can look at??
XP Pro SP2

irlrobins

in IE, Tools->Options->Content. Allows you to make a list of approved and disapproved sites that can be visited or not. Might be enough to do what you want.

rogue-entity

@irlrobins: That wont work, IE6 doesnt filter by URLs like that, what you are thinking of is the Security subsystem, where you can add "bad" URLs to the list and then IE will disable all active scripting and other features that can be exploited to infect your machine.

What the OP wants is a basic content filter that will block unacceptable sites from being viewed. You can set a Supervisor password and then configure values for the rating system. This relies on websites having an ICRA/PICs label which is read by IE to determine if the site should be displayed without requesting the Supervisor password. Sites that have no ICRA label (most sites on the net) will not work without the password.

There are a few internet blockers available for home PCs like CyberPatrol, NetNanny, Websense (I think they have a home-PC version) and WeBlocker. These will do what you want, some wont let you edit the list of blocked sites so you cant add sites you want blocked, so try the different ones until you find one that works. The good ones let you enter a password to bypass the filter for sites that are blocked normally, letting you browse unhindered, or letting you ublock a site your child wants access to, letting you vet the site and decide if its appropriate. Some antivirus programmes like Panda have parental controls like that built in and will work with any browser on the system too.

If you have a spare PC with a pair of network sockets, you can setup a filtering system like Censornet which is much more configurable, but is probabaly OTT.

On the last note, you should really consider switching to a safer browser such as Opera or Firefox, IE is a hazard to your systems security. I can personally vouch for one school that noticed a near 80% drop in virus infections since they locked out IE from the students and migrated to Firefox.

NutJob

The ratings function. That makes a browser unusable but can be bypassed if ur kid knows how to use regedit.