Internet content filter
 

I'm looking for an internet filtering software for Linux. Can you recommend any? Doing a google search is ok but unfortunately I need some user experiences, too. What I want is some parental control over every incoming and outgoing connection that occurs. Password protection or similar would be cool -- I don't need a filter which can be turned off with a few mouse clicks.

There are many fine filtering programs for Windows I'm using right now. Been dual-booting with ZipSlack some time... maybe I'll switch 100% now. The filtering happens according to "inappropriate" words given. If a web site, instant message ot whatever contains a "bad word", the connection simply doesn't work. So it's like a firewall. It would be a HUGE plus if I could also type in phrases.

The problem with most of the (Windows) software is that it only filters for example Internet Explorer connections and that's it. And the last time we used IE was some months ago. So, a filtering software for i.e. Konqueror isn't what I'm looking for.

I hope even someone can help.

Regards,
Bamse

i am good enough at linux. but i use squid cache proxy and iptables to control the local clients internet access.. there are some web filters for squid.. one of them is squidGuard. u may find it at http://freshmeat.net ,
i havent installed squidGuard b4. i cannot help u much about this.

i hope u will do..

There are hunderds of filtering programs for Win32, so I guess there must be several for GNU/Linux, too. The problem is that the filters for Win32 are all commercial and cost a lot. I've been using iProtectYou Free Trial, which they just dumped to maintain and now they only have the Pro version. The other problem here is that these filters are childish telling the user to do one's homework etc...

If there is a good customizable internet filter/parental control for all connections or maybe even a way to create one myself, I'd be glad to hear from you! In a few days this thread will vanish, tho...

Regards,
Bamse

It depends on what you want to filter out.

If you want to filter traffic based 'wrong words' in URL, it is the most simple thing; and I would say it is the squid proxy (maybe in combination with squirm) that you want. Squid has acls, by which you can filter traffic both by source and destination url (and much more). If you use squirm, too, you can define regexps to find 'wrong words' in url.

However, if you want to do virus checking of internet traffic, I would say there is no free and reliable solution. At least I could not find any some month ago.

The most promising I found was squirm, but that is still not good enough:
- unreliable: files can be passed to checking based on the source url, and so it can be easily cheated
- inefficient: all files are downloaded two times; first by squirm for checking, then, if clean, by the squid proxy itself
- instable: in certain cases (much too often) it can produce loops meanwhile many pop-up windows show up on the client

To filter out adds or innapropriate content, try Dan's Guardian, Middleman, or Privoxy. None of these is perfect, but they work about as well as their Win32 equivalents.

I don't know of any non-commercial virus-checking internet filters for Linux.