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Anyone know of a really good internet filter? It doesn’t have to be from a Jewish company just something that I can set up different settings per user. Please no “you shouldn’t have internet at all” comments.
Koshernet
Filters are good for the average persons concern about garbage on the internet, but for us, we should think more in terms of a gefilter.
you shouldn’t have internet at all
Is there a charge for Koshernet? Does it allow you to choose what’s allowed on your computer or do they have specific restrictions? Also can someone who is really good with computers get around Koshernet and still access sites that were blocked?
You shouldn’t have a computer.
gefen: every filter can be circumvented
Gefen,
Its 14 dollars a month
And yes it let’s you choose
It mostly runs on generality (arts and culture, sports, etc) call them up and ask them
Personally I think its very good
soliek – so what’s the point of it?
I think the reusable filters are a little more than 14 a month, but more green.
“soliek – so what’s the point of it?”
the point is so that you arent bombarded with a nisayon, and that theres an extra geder. suppose you happened across a site featuring pictures of scantily clad women, you would probably be more inclined to investigate further than if you had never happened across that site in the first place. thats the purpose of a filter. anyone determined enough can circumvent a filter, but thats not why youre getting it.
also dont waste money on koshernet…get a free filter like K-9
The problem with filters that use key words is that the can block sites that you need to access that are totally innocuous. Koshernet may be okay, but the best internet filter is the one between your ears. If you have children, though, use a strong filter and never allow a child to have private access to an internet linked device.
Your best bet is to ask someone who installs computer systems. They would have the most comprehensive answer. There are filters at the router level or before it comes into your house/office.
As Raphael says (hi, ex-colleague!).
Personally I don’t believe in filters, even if just because my IT level is such that a filter would merely be a minor inconvenience to get around, but a major inconvenience in that it would trouble me all day. I’m not a baby and I don’t need a babysitter.
I grew up in The Netherlands. There, one can take a train to Amsterdam, walk a bit to the left and see the most horrible things. Yet I would never go there. The internet is just the same. All you need is self control. Be a normal responsible adult, that’s all.
kollel_wife: trust me every filter can be circumvented. the biggest problem with every filter is finding that line between too lenient and self defeating. that line is never perfect and is therefore always exploitable.
the only really impenetrable filter would be to route all of your traffic through a proxy and filter it through a whitelist, which is usually self defeating unless you dont mind manually editing a whitelist every time you need a site that isnt on there.
when i say self defeating i mean that the filter becomes so crippling that you get rid of it. a perfect example would be google.com. when you access google.com, youre really accessing around 6 IP addresses at once, because elements on the page contact different IP addresses and grab information from them. so gogole.com might not work as intended because those Ip addresses would not be included in your whitelist. another example would be gmail or yahoo mail which all draw data from a whole host of IP addresses and external web addresses when constructing the page you know as your email inbox, and all of those would be blocked by a whitelist.
i have a whitelist running where i work and trust me its a pain in the behind to maintain.
K9 by BlueCoat
It’s free, you can set blocking catagories, and you can set times that it blocks all internet (like when the kids are supposed to be doing homework).
you shouldn’t have electricity
There are plenty of people who aren’t able to get past the filters. If you know that you can’t, or if you really know your kids computer knowledge, it works fine.
Gatesheader – May I please introduce you to a very integral part of yourself ? It’s called your yetzer harah. He’s very gifted at attacking normal, responsible people.
May I please introduce you to a mitzvah called “yiras shamayim” ? It’s about assuming you are more vulnerable to doing the wrong thing than you think.
Gatesheader- good for you that you have that sort of control. However, there are people that know themselves to have control when it isn’t in their pocket. I have a friend who is part of SA and he will do whatever it takes to stay away from a nisayon so, for some its important “not to trust themselves” and rather set up a system where they are limiting their nisyonos.
Do you think most people in SA planned on ending up there ? It’s a downward spiral. Make proper s’yugim and you won’t run into problems.
The sugya of “kol hagadol m’chaveiro yitzro gadol mimenu” is very deep. However understood, however, I’ve always assumed that Abaye was pretty normal and resonsible, and he didn’t trust himself with some pretty big, and what you’d consider “abnormal”, nisyonos.
You should have a computer, and even if you do, you shouldn’t have Internet, and if you do than you shouldn’t be. Do it like me, I have my neighbor fax me everything in the coffee room every night, and then I stay up all night and in the morning I fax my neighbor what to post. It is the smartest, safest, and easiest filter.
Any filter can be defeated by a user with administrative access to a PC. For some people, physical access is as good as administrative access. The best filtering is through a gateway that the users do not have physical access to.
basically a filter is a geder, not a guarantee that you wont see certain things if properly motivated
@Logician: “Gatesheader – May I please introduce you to a very integral part of yourself ? It’s called your yetzer harah. He’s very gifted at attacking normal, responsible people.
May I please introduce you to a mitzvah called “yiras shamayim” ? It’s about assuming you are more vulnerable to doing the wrong thing than you think.”
Sure, but I think you didn’t read the second part of what I wrote. First of all, my job requires unlimited internet access, second, my level of IT knowledge ought to be sufficient to defeat any filter. I could never live with any sort of filter.
As for why my job demands it – I’m an IT engineer who works with devices in the price range where “entry-level” means around $40,000 and “high-level” means a couple of millions. The number of sites I use and may suddenly need for work-related research alone defeats the idea of a filter. Then there’s the issue that I use sites in numerous different languages around the world to keep track of the news, for example.
Oh, right, and my dream was always to study medidine and I read quite a lot of medical-scientific material, including on gynecology, for example. Would a filter block the words there?
Honestly, filters are for little children and people who cannot control themselves (and don’t have good IT skills).
I can walk in the street in places where they sell non-kosher food, right? I can walk through cities where prostitution is unfortunately rampant, right? I can walk into stores where they sell filthy things, right? I don’t have someone accompanying me everywhere I go all day long. I don’t see why the internet is any different. Would it be different because the internet is something you can access privately, from inside your home, all alone without anybody knowing? Well, I am quite capable of dressing ‘undercover’ (I’m undercover for work, especially since I have to travel all across the city by bus and metro), and I could easily get on a bus, train or metro and get out of the city, to another city where nobody knows me, nobody would ever recognize me, and do the most horrible things. Yet I don’t do that, because I don’t do things that are not allowed. Again – why is the internet any different?
I just don’t get it and never will.
TCG –
+1
Hey Logician, as the gemara in Sukkos explains, the higher the spiritual madrega of the individual, Abaye in the gemara’s case, the stronger the yetzer harah. I can’t speak for the Gatesheader but I, personally, am on such a low spiritual madrega that the yetzer harah doesn’t concern itself with me.
TCG: You are not the NORM! Most people are not on that madreiga and need the help. Ask any of our gedolim who are dealing with the thousands of cases of destroyed marraiges and people who are going off the derech. ALL BECAUSE OF THE INTERNET! A very close friend of mine is a therapist, and she claims that ALL her cases of marital therapy, started with this awful computer. Yes, I trust myself as well but listen to the gedolim, hear what they have to say!
“thousands of cases of destroyed marraiges”
perhaps
“and people who are going off the derech. ALL BECAUSE OF THE INTERNET!”
highly improbably. it takes more than a little filth to get someone off the derech…theres always something else.
Soleik: From a therapists mouth: It starts with the computer they get hooked and slowly the marraige goes out the window with the religion.
You don’t have to believe me but those are the facts! Thousands of families RUINED and you question what the Rabbonim are talking about!! Even one case is too many!! Not every person is strong enough to pass the nisyonos involved. Putting a filter on the internet should be mandatory! It might make things a little slow but worth the trouble.
As far as all the computer whizzes out there if a filter won’t stop you, nothing will. This is not meant for the people who want to beat the system, it is made for those who don’t WANT to fall in and need the extra help!
youre right about marriages, i agreed with you about marriages, but i disagree with you about off the derech. unless you were saying that once a person wrecks his marriage he goes off the derech…i thought you were talking about unmarried people when you said off the derech.
Marriages got ruined before the internet also, so I highly doubt that “all” ruined marriages are due to the internet. It would also be very interesting to compare the frum divorce rate in 2012 to the frum divorce rate 20 years ago. Basically, I suspect you won’t see much of a difference, and if there is any, I highly doubt the internet has anything to do with it.
Anyway, here’s another reason: I wasn’t always frum, so I’m not too afraid of the big bad world out there. For an 18-year old boy from a frum family who hasn’t seen anything but frum Gateshead, Lakewood, or Boro Park and who has never spoken more than 3 words with a non-Jew and never spoken more than 2 words to any female who is not close family, things might be different.
Yeah, I know people say “that’s the yetzer hora talking”. I’m sorry, but I don’t really care. I know myself, and I (sadly, unfortunately) make my own decisions. And yes, I know I should ask a rov, however, being my Dutch arrogant self, I am my own boss and make my own decisions – I could never accept anything I do not agree with. Sounds bad, maybe it is, but that’s just the way it is.
Gatesheader – that last point I agree with, you’re def. in a different position than a FB.
1. Yiras Shamayim should require you not to be so confident about it.
A mamin: I find that hard to believe. The internet may be a catalyst, but it’s very rarely a cause for these issues.
Sam2: Lucky for you that you don’t know of any cases!!Speak or listen to the Rabbonim!
Soleik: I was referring to the clients my friend has that come in for marital issues, that started with the internet and end up in divorce and then sadly going off the derech. I was not talking about singles.
Unfortunately people think that marraige is a hospital, it is not!
A manin
I have a friend who used to work at a tourist souviner store in Manhattan. Next door there was “a place where a frum jew shouldnt go”
As part of his job was to stand on the sidewalk and pull people into the store. Of course he could see who was going into the place next door.
He told me he used to see such people go all the time to this place and this was BEFORE the internet.
Things were done before the internet and will continue to be done. No amount of filter will stop it
The best filter is a computer that is accessible and usable only in front of other people. Specifically, people you would not want to cross.
apushatayid is right.
Me and my wife use our computers only in the living room on the table. I used to sit in the ‘third room / study room / soon-???”?-to-be-baby-room all alone, but decided that was anti-social, not nice for my wife.
Zehavasdad: In my times if a person wanted to “gliche” they had to go to the city and go out in the open with their Jewish garb and …
Today you don’t neeed to be worried about who will see you … you can gliche in the privacy of your own computer to all the depths of tumaah!!
you are validating apushatayid, however he had a different reason as to why you should use a computer only in front of other people.
I have done the same in our business. there is no filter (only open DNS to which anyone with a little computer knowledge can easily work around.
Therefore all computers are at all times usable only in front of other people.
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