Kills the soul.
Damages every relationship you have with the opposite sex.
Blocks true communion with God.
Rhymes with ‘Corn’.
If you haven’t guessed yet, you can stop reading now.
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Instead of the usual self searching confession I am attempting something new today: Offering people suggestions on how they can keep the crap out of sight. Not hiding it in a drawer somewhere – but keeping it out of your house and out of your kids hands. If you think your kids are immune you’re kidding yourself (no pun intended). Porn is like sand at the beach – no matter what you do you’re gonna find some if you’ve surfed that day. So, like a shower at the beach here are a few ways I’ve found to wash the sand off. Occasionally some will still pop-up (I’m looking at you, google image search) These are all ways I protect myself so I can attest to their success – they work. Even so if you’ve struggled in the past you need to seek some help outside of yourself – I suggest XXXChurch.com and their X3 Pure program. It’s awesome and worth every penny.
Now, on with the show!
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When it comes to internet there are several ways to filter – you can filter on your desktop or laptop but that leaves every other device wide open for abuse – think iPod touch.The other choice is filtering your entire network. There are a couple of ways to do this:
DNS filtering
Running your own filter on your entire network.
There are probably more that I’m unaware of but this isn’t a networking class – it’s a self-help session.
DNS filtering is pretty robust and has the advantage of being totally free (for personal use) and extremely hard to bypass.
The way the internet works is (basically, again not a networking class!) this: you type in an address – say ‘google.com’. To a computer google.com doesn’t mean squat so it has to get the real address (74.125.67.106) and directs you there. The service that does this translation is call a Domain Name Server or DNS.
One of the companies that handles DNS is OpenDNS. OpenDNS offers free(!) filtering to registered users of the service. They’ve also got several awesome tutorials on how to set up the service. It’s extremely robust and like I said – hard to bypass (unless you’ve got the password to the router).
Running your own (I said running, not rolling your own 
) filter can be a pretty daunting task. It’s basically running a piece of hardware or software that looks at everything going to/from the internet and filters out the stuff you don’t want. I use a product called ‘Untangle‘ running on an older PC I purchased just for this use. Like OpenDNS it is robust and free for home use. They offer some paid options but with these two in place I don’t think they’re necessary.
Running these every device on your home network is protected to some extent. This includes your PS3 and Xbox and your kids iPod touches. This is nice, until you’re on a road trip with the promise of ‘free wi-fi!’ for your laptop. In this case there are several options to run local filters on your laptop – XXXChurch has X3Pure, Covenant Eyes has their program, etc. etc. I highly recommend finding and using one of them.
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Now for the greatest leak in the above mentioned services: your smartphone. Unlike your iPod touch or PS3 your phone isn’t dependent on your home network for its internet connection. So we’ve gone to the effort of building a giant dam with a hole in the middle… Your iPhone.
I can only speak as a Verizon user but I’ve discovered they now offer content filtering for free (!). They’re pretty basic levels (think R/PG/G in terms of levels) but they work well. I’ve got them set up on my iPhone and my MiGo access point and they do their job. Again, I’m on Verizon so I cannot speak for the other providers. This trounced other efforts I’ve seen like using only a 3rd party browser or totally locking out the browser.
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The key to all of these is someone who’s willing to control the passwords to these two services. That pretty much prevents you from ‘accidentally’ turning them off. It also helps because you’ve probably also got a good accountability partner there. Someone to call when things get tough. Everything I’ve read recommends against using your spouse as your accountability partner so a trusted same-sex friend is probably a good choice.
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That’s it! That’s what I use every day. I’m blessed with some friends who are willing to ask the hard questions and can remember the passwords so I can do occasional maintenance (upgrades/etc). You don’t have to fight it alone!
Now, for you AT&T/US Cellular/Sprint/Virgin Mobile customers out there: What options do you have for filtering?
Posted in Struggle
