Protect Your Family Online for Free

While the Internet has an abundant supply of useful places to go, it’s also a haven for seedy, ugly places that you don’t want your family visiting.  There are options for filtering, however many of them cost money and require you to install software.  This is not the best solution for everyone.  Fortunately, there is an alternative.  OpenDNS is offering filtering of adult web sites for free and without having to install software.

How does it work?

To explain how it works, I need to explain what DNS is.  DNS stands for Domain Name System.  Every computer on a network (the Internet is an enormous network) has an address that they use to find each other.  It’s very much like the address the postal service uses to find your home.  Since computers speak numbers,  your computer’s address is a series of numbers.   While this works very well for computers, it isn’t very effective for people.   Since we like words, a naming convention was developed.  After all, it’s easier to remember and type www.amazon.com than it is to type 207.171.166.252.  DNS is the system that looks up the numbers that correspond to the address you type into your browser.  On large networks including the Internet, DNS servers are used.  They contain giant lists of valid websites and the numbered addresses they use.  Every time you visit a website your request is sent to a DNS server that finds the address of the website you are looking for and sends you there.  When you sign up for Internet service, your Internet Service Provider (ISP) provides you with DNS to make the Internet useful to you.  Normally, they do this behind the scenes and you don’t have to worry about setting up anything.  You enter the name of the website you want to visit and your ISP’s DNS servers handle the look ups.  With the content filtering by OpenDNS, you use the DNS server from OpenDNS instead of the DNS server from your ISP.  OpenDNS maintains a list of adult websites, and when you try to visit a website, it checks your request against its list of bad sites.  If it’s a bad site, it blocks you from visiting.

How do I set it up?

You have two options.  If you have just one computer and you don’t use a router (mostly with dial-up), it’s a simple change to your computer’s network settings.  OpenDNS has good instructions on how to do this.

More commonly these days, you have broadband and a simple home network with a router.  In that case, you’ll want to set up your router to use OpenDNS.  Setting up your router is a better way to go.  Every device that uses your network normally gets filtered, because every device on your network will go through your router unless the default settings have been changed on the device.  This includes cell phones, iPods, video game consoles, iPads, and computers.  Again, OpenDNS has very simple step by step instructions specific to router models.  Chances are, they have your router listed.  Setting up your router means you don’t have to change every device on your network individually.

Is that it?

While a good solution, it’s not perfect.  There are ways around it.  For instance, you can override the DNS settings on most devices that connect to your network.  However, to do this, you need to be running in an account with administrative privileges.  If you took my advice from my earlier post, What is an Administrator?, you won’t be running your computers as an administrator.  For portable devices such as cell phones, this gets more difficult to stop.  If your kids setup your router for you, they can log in and change the DNS settings to get past the filtering.  Setting up a router isn’t overly complicated, it’s something that you can do.  New offerings such as the upcoming Linksys Valet series of routers by Cisco are touting their quick and easy setup.  Those should be at your local retailer such as Radio Shack and Target soon.  At the very least, you should at least change the password so they can’t make changes that you don’t want.  Finally, people are now taking the Internet with them wherever they go in the form of mobile phones and other devices such as the 3G enabled iPad.  When these types of devices enter your home, it’s very difficult to filter access, particularly if you don’t own the device.  However, if you feel that filtering the Internet is a good idea, this is a good solution.  Just don’t be fooled into thinking that it’s foolproof.

There is a downside to this arrangement in that changes are completely out of your control.  You can’t change what you can access and what you can’t.  If you want more control, OpenDNS does offer a free basic package with controls over what gets filtered and what doesn’t.  Setting that up is a post for another time.

A Better Battery Gage for Your Windows Laptop.

The following is a repost of an article originally appearing in my Casa De Casa Weblog.

Laptop users know the standard battery gauge that Windows uses leaves much to be desired.  It’s very small and doesn’t offer much information.  Fortunately there are alternatives.  One of them is Battery Bar from  Osiris Development.   For starters, battery bar sits on the task bar and is much larger than the standard Windows battery icon and therefore much easier to see.  That feature alone is worth the price of admission, but it offers more.

Clicking on the BatteryBar icon changes it from percentage of charge / discharge to a runtime / charge time format in hh:mm.

When hovering over the BatteryBar icon, a pop up appears with additional information including the percentage of battery wear, which will be particularly useful for road warriors who will want to have advanced notice of impending battery doom.

BatteryBar comes in a free and a paid version.  The free version contains all of the features listed above and should work well for most users.  The paid version is inexpensive and comes with some extra features such as graphing of battery profiles.   BatteryBar is light on resources and offers up necessary information in an easy and straightforward manner.  BatteryBar is available for Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7.  The free version can be had here.

What is a User Account?

Note: While this post is specific to Windows XP on a home network, the fundamentals here are the same for other modern versions of Windows as well as OSX and Linux / Unix.

All modern operating systems use what are known as user accounts.  To better understand this, we can liken the computer to an apartment building.  Inside the building are many unique apartments.  Each apartment has its own unique lock on the door, can be painted and decorated by the tenant, and generally is off limits to the other tenants.  Likewise, each user account can have its own lock on the door in the form of a password, it can be uniquely decorated via individual backgrounds and settings, and the account and any files in it are generally off limits to the other user accounts.  Of course, there are exceptions.  Like the building manager, who has a master key to allow him access to any apartment as needed, there is a special type of user account known as an administrator that can peek into any other account.  As the building manager is responsible for all things in the building such as the air conditioning and the plumbing and changing the locks, the administrator is responsible to make sure the computer and everything in it stays in top-notch shape in the form of software updates, virus scans, firewall settings, etc.

In Windows XP on a home network, there are three types of accounts; Guest, Limited User, and Administrator.  We won’t get into the Guest account here because it’s outside the scope of this post.  The limited user account type will let you do things like browse the Internet, check email, use most software such as instant messaging, word processing, and spreadsheets.  The administrator account type has the keys to everything.  You can do anything a limited user can do plus a lot more.  For instance, you can install software, delete another user’s files, install printers and other hardware, set the system time, add and remove user accounts, etc.   As apartments buildings normally only need one building manager, most computers will only need one administrator account.  While your computer is not required to have any limited user accounts, it must have at least one administrator account.

Most of the time, each person that uses the computer gets their own account.  Each account (and therefore each person) will get their own unique My Documents folder to keep their files in.   Each account can have personal email accounts, browser bookmarks, backgrounds, address book, iTunes accounts, etc.  These items are isolated from other limited user accounts.  As an example, let’s say we have a family computer.  The three users are Bob, Mary, and their son Larry.  Each of the three has a limited user account and their own password.  Setup this way, Bob doesn’t have to wade through Larry’s bookmarks of skateboarding websites when he wants to check his brokerage website.  Mary can sync her iPod via iTunes and not have to dig through Bob’s music to change her play lists.  Larry can set his background to display a picture of his girlfriend and it won’t interfere with Bob’s background picture of that luxury sports sedan he’s been wanting.  As you can see, user accounts allow us to set up the computer so that it feels like home to each of us.

As a final note, some software will require that a user have administrator privileges to run properly.  I highly recommend you find a replacement for this software if possible.  You should always be using limited user accounts for your normal day-to-day routine, and log into your administrator account only when necessary.  For an explanation of why this is important, please see my post ‘What’s an Administrator?’.

What’s an Administrator?

Note: This post builds upon my post ‘What is a User Account?‘ It is important that you understand that post fully before moving on to this one.

Over the years, I have observed that most people take their new computer out of the box, plug it in and start using it immediately.   Of course, the first thing you have to do is create a user account and the first user account is an administrator account.  They normally fail to create a second limited account for their day-to-day operations.  This is typically the first mistake they make with their new computer.  It is generally a bad idea to handle your day-to-day operations as an administrator.  Here’s why; When you click on that attachment in an email or visit a website (even legitimate websites) that has malware (the class of software that does bad stuff to your computer, which includes viruses) it can go ahead and install itself on your computer because, by running as an administrator, you have permission to install software.  If you were operating as a non-administrative user, you would not be able to install software and in most cases, the malware would not be able to install itself.  Now, at this time, I must say that with Windows, some software will require you to be an administrator to run correctly.  If this is the case, I highly recommend you seek out new software that will give you the features you need, but not need you to be an administrator.  In addition to making it a lot harder for the bad guys to install software on your machine for you, you also make it much more difficult to do serious damage to your computer if you aren’t running with administrator privileges.

So, what do I need to do?  If you are setting up a new computer, put a good password on the first account and make it your administrator account, then create a second account to use as your day-to-day use account.  Make this second account a limited user.  Put a good password on that account as well.  If you are already using an administrator account, then you will want to use your existing account to create a new account with administrator privileges, then log into the newly created account and remove administrator privileges from your older day-to-day account.  I’ll show you how to do this in Windows XP.

Press Start, then click on the icon labeled Control Panel, then on the User Accounts icon (Start -> Control Panel -> User Accounts).

1. As you can see from the screen shot above, I’ve got an administrative account (Admin) setup and a regular user (mike) account setup.  This is the model that you should be using.  If you only have one account, then you’ll want to select ‘Create a new account’ and setup a new account and make sure you make it a ‘Computer Administrator’.  Now, log off, then log into your newly created administrator account.

2. After clicking on ‘Change an account’, then choosing the account you want to change,  click on ‘Change the Account Type’.

3. Now, select ‘limited’ as your account type for day-to-day usage.

If you have multiple accounts that are listed as Computer Administrator, go back through these steps (starting with step 2) and change each account to the limited type.  You only need one administrator account on the computer.  Make sure all of your accounts use good passwords as well.

If you want to install something as a limited user, you’ll simply need to right-click on the program that you want to install, then select ‘Run As’. From there, you will be able to select your administrator account and enter the administrator password.  If you have a lot of changes to make, sometimes it’s just easier to login as your administrator and make your changes there.  Also, you may need to log in as your administrator to set up things like scheduled updates, scheduled scans for your virus scanner, install hardware, add or remove user accounts, or to do other types of maintenance tasks which we will cover in later posts.

I hope I’ve been able to shed some light on exactly what an administrator account is and why you should NOT be using this type of account in your day-to-day usage.  This step alone can prevent you from a lot of unneeded aggravation.

Not using an administrator account for your regular usage is only one step in securing your computer.  Read more in my post ‘Lock Down!  Security Basics for the Home PC User‘ on my Casa De Casa Weblog.