Need Advice Please

Santa brought my 14 year old, mildly autistic son, a new pc for Christmas. It's a low end eMachine running XP Home. My son will use it to check email on gmail, play on Pogo.com and visit the websites advertised on tv for kids. His favorites include sites such as nickelodeon.com, hotwheels.com, capncrunch.com, thomasthetankengine.com, etc. Here is where I need help. These sites have advertisements that he can't tell aren't part of the original website if he clicks them. I want to prevent the bad stuff - adware, trojans, etc. that many of these sites present as a danger. With my sons autism, teaching him what's okay to click on a site, and what isn't okay, is as complicated as the number of websites out there. It's not a simple task. What can I do to restrict his web browsing to pre-approved sites (on a reasonable budget)? Are there programs that will stop Internet Explorer (I'm happy to change browsers if recommended.) from navigating to whatever he clicks on?

I have set myself up as administrator and him as a user with restrictions. I've downloaded AVG Free Edition and Ad-Aware 2007 (willing to pay for the real time protection if recommended). I wanted PopThis! but can't find it to download. So, if you also happen to know of a good pop-up blocker that has a whitelist option and won't allow my son to approve the pop-up, please share that too. He approves all pop-ups if given an option such as holding Ctrl, etc. I need one that runs quietly in the background without giving notice that a pop-up was blocked or instructions on how to allow the pop-up if you want it.

Thank you for any and all recommendations!

 

Here's one http://www.majorgeeks.com/WebAllow_d5388.html and the price is very reasonable ($19.95). There are others in the Security section here at MajorGeeks. My friends with children use NetNanny (link: http://www.netnanny.com/) and CyberSieve (link: http://www.softforyou.com/cs-index.html) this link also has alot of articles about internet filtering for parents and similar topics. The articles are more or less 'slanted' towards the products they're trying to sell, but many valid points are brought up and discussed. Definitely worth a look.

 

Most browsers have built-in pop up blockers (including Internet Explorer). If it doesn't do as good a job as you'd like, try the Yahoo toolbar. It has a pop up blocker, a spy blocker, and some other features. Check it out here: http://www.majorgeeks.com/Yahoo_Toolbar_For_IE_d4325.html or here: http://www.download.com/3000-12768_4-10783137.html or get it straight from Yahoo: http://toolbar.yahoo.com/ (I had problems with the MajorGeeks page for Yahoo toolbar, so I provided other links too).

 

You could try out Firefox ( Or Seamonkey, KMelon..) and use the Adblock Plus extension.

It blocks out ads and will hopefully solve your problem for free.