You may have read my post early on about K9 internet filtering. K9 is a good resource to use in home computers, but I have recently found out that to put it on your church computers (i.e. business) you need to purchase a license.

You may want to check out OpenDNS. It provides similar internet saftety solutions and is completely free for any setting. I must admit that I have not used this yet. I plan on taking K9 off of one of my church computers and installing OpenDNS on it instead.

Have you had any experience with OpenDNS? Tell us about it.

I recently came across a program which provides a safe and entertaining web environment for kids. It’s called Kido’z. Kido’z is a great resource to pass along to your parents or to install on computers that kids may use in your ministry. You can read more about it here. It is in the beta version now, so you can get it for free. Eventually they will come out with a premium version with more features, but from their site, it looks like the free version is very usable.

Please let me know if you have ever used this program before. How did it work?

Do you know of any similar web environments for kids?

There are a ton of internet filters to choose from and they pretty much all cost money. You can choose Safe Eyes, AFO, bsafeonline, and Net Nanny. They will cost you $40-50 and/or a monthly charge. These are all adequate filters and have received good reviews, however, K9 Web Protection is a diamond in the rough. It is completely free and has been downloaded over 1 million times. It offers real time protection and updates and works seamlessly in your existing browser without any extra search bars, plug ins or add ons.

The parent company, Blue Coat makes its money by securing network systems for Fortune 500 companies. They seem genuinely concerned about helping families keep a safe and secure home and that is why they offer K9 Web Protection for free. It uses the exact same database and technology as their commercial system. You can look here for details about what K9 offers.

This program is free for home use and would be a great resource to promote to the parents of your ministry. We use this in my home and only my wife knows the password. This keeps me (and my brother in law who lives with us) accountable and encourages us to live above reproach. It is very easy to check for sites that have been visited via the web-based administration page. It is also impossible to deactivate or uninstall without the main administrator password. I hope it can be of benefit to your home and the homes of families in your ministry.