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How do I keep my kids away from myspace.com?

I have two Macs. One is running Mac OS X Panther, the other Mac OS X Tiger. They both have Safari and Explorer. I have kids that want to spent alot of time on myspace.com. I have heard that you can use Unix to redirect URLs by changing the host file. If you could help me I would apreciate it.

Dave's Answer:

You could ostensibly go into the /etc/hosts file on the computer in question and add:

127.0.0.1 myspace.com www.myspace.com

which would effectively stop them being able to visit the site. (Note: you'll need to restart your computer for this to work)

But they'll also perhaps figure out a workaround, so you might consider some sort of monitoring solution instead?

My favorite Mac software directory site VersionTracker has a number of interesting matches to a search for parental, notably including the following:

SafeEyes which blocks by category, keyword, key phrase or specific sites you'd rather your children avoid.
Intego Content Barrier X which blocks "adult web sites, sites with subjects not fit for children, and even blocks chats when predatory language is used." A nice benefit: it works with multiple users so your older children might have permission to visit some sites your younger children cannot.
GURL Watcher doesn't actually prevent your kids from visiting sites, it just records every URL visited. You can have the program email you a site list if you'd rather not save it to a file on the computer too.
Kids GoGoGo X which gets my award for best name, hands down. Kids GoGoGo has a frankly terrible Web site but the featureset of this application are terrific: it blocks Web sites, RSS feeds and even objectionable podcasts.

Please note that I haven't tested any of these, but I really do understand your concerns regarding the phenomenally popular MySpace site. Indeed, I have a friend who is alarmed to find that her young teen daughter has a half-dozen male penpals through the site and is naively sharing her full name, city of residence, and other information. Most likely it's innocent and safe, but there's no question that there's an unsavory subset of MySpace members who you really don't want your kids mixing with.

Good luck to you with this. My kids are too young for me to worry about yet, but soon enough I'll be in your shoes too.

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Categorized: Mac OS X Help , MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Social Network Help (Article 6015)
Tagged: net nanny, parental controls, protecting children, site filtering
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Comments

Perhaps this problem doesn't lend itself to a tech solution? It might be easier to talk with our kids about social sites than to block all the possible venues they might^H^H^H^H^H will discover.

Btw, here's a nice read about myspace.com, why it's currently popular, and how it fits into our kids' lives.

http://www.danah.org/papers/AAAS2006.html

rick

(Hi Dave! - Found you via a geo search from feedmap.net)

Posted by: Rick Levine at March 7, 2006 2:47 PM

Dude im at skool i wanna get on my space how can i hack into mysapce?

Posted by: Josh at April 27, 2006 7:01 AM

Here are all the entries needs in the HOSTS file:

127.0.0.1 login.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 myspace.com
127.0.0.1 www.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 home.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 browseusers.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 search.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 invite.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 blog.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 favorites.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 forum.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 groups.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 events.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 vids.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 music.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 classifieds.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 profile.myspace.com

Believe me - you need them all.

Posted by: Billy D. at August 21, 2006 3:38 PM

hmmmm. nice try kids will always be tring to "FIT IN" and if they cant figure out how to be on myspace at schoold they shouldnt be on myspace. i personally dont have a problem with it but some people abuse it running it for us all. by the way USE GOOGLE to get on it if you cant fifure out how never mind

Posted by: jjthejetplane at November 10, 2006 12:24 PM

where are those host files

Posted by: nicolas at December 13, 2006 9:36 PM

Anybody else notice how stupid the conversation became once the search engines picked up "myspace" on the site? Note to self: NEVER mention myspace on my website. (o:

Posted by: Me at June 4, 2007 9:19 PM

i have a home network, and on my netgear router i have set up web pages blocks on a certain schedule pertaining to times the kids and any friends should be asleep. i have myspace allowed only on at certain times, though i have discovered that when signed onto aol, the kids can access any blocked sites, now i have though of parental controls but that only works for the screennames on my own account, i would really like to be able to block the webpage access of the aol program, i have contacted AOL and they were of no help at all .... could someone please find out what i would need to add to my routers block lists to disable that ability in the aol program ?

Posted by: Rob Fuller at October 1, 2007 12:53 PM

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I do have a comment, now that you mention it!