Question What is the most hackproof parental controls for computers?

[Rodion15]

My 18yo son has hacked into all parental controls I set on his PC, to the point of installing bootable OS drives to bypass parental controls, he also used VPNs, etc, etc.

I thought a Chromebox may be the host hackproof parental controls system, and they're cheap. Am I right?

Unless I can use some DNS service like Cloudflare or similar, not sure if this would do the job.

Any advice much appreciated

 

[white.a.drew]

My son has hacked into all parental controls I set on his PC, to the point of installing bootable OS drives to bypass parental controls, he also used VPNs, etc, etc.

I thought a Chromebox may be the host hackproof parental controls system, and they're cheap. Am I right?

Unless I can use some DNS service like Cloudflare or similar, not sure if this would do the job.

Any advice much appreciated

So here's the main question how old is the kid if he's in his teens good luck..... Nothing is hack proof and especially to a dedicated teen. I start when I was in kindergarten my mom got a call from the school saying I was no longer allowed on their system because three times in a row I got out of the system locks so.... A teen is a lot brighter then you realize.... Only way you'll stop him for the most part is lock out the bios and make him a none admin account on the PC tell him good luck.... Make the admin password 32 character long and even the best decipher tools will struggle to crack it

 

[white.a.drew]

My son has hacked into all parental controls I set on his PC, to the point of installing bootable OS drives to bypass parental controls, he also used VPNs, etc, etc.

I thought a Chromebox may be the host hackproof parental controls system, and they're cheap. Am I right?

Unless I can use some DNS service like Cloudflare or similar, not sure if this would do the job.

Any advice much appreciated

So here's the main question how old is the kid if he's in his teens good luck..... Nothing is hack proof and especially to a dedicated teen. I start when I was in kindergarten my mom got a call from the school saying I was no longer allowed on their system because three times in a row I got out of the system locks so.... A teen is a lot brighter then you realize.... Only way you'll stop him for the most part is lock out the bios and make him a none admin account on the PC tell him good luck.... Make the admin password 32 character long and even the best decipher tools will struggle to crack it

The issue with a bios lock is removing the CMOS battery from the mobo will delete the password there is a tool that locks it via a installer but I can't remember the name right now

 

[bill001g]

DNS services are one of the most ineffective methods. DNS is easily bypassed and just using vpn also bypasses it. Most people should be using encrypted DNS now that the OS itself supports it. This prevent anyone from snooping on the DNS requests.....including your own equipment.

If you want to go through the pain of a firewall that blocks all sites except for a list of approved ip addresses that will work. Manually putting in all the allowed IP is quite a core unless the list is small....like you only allow the IP addresses of work or school. The firewall must physically be protected.
Now things like time of day limitation are a bit easier than trying to restrict lists of sites.

Best option is the big stick approach. Tell him you are not blocking anything but are monitoring and if you find a violation you will put his computer in the dumpster. Key here is there has to be a actual penalty. Many routers allow you to get lists of IP addresses being accessed. It is a huge pain to manually dig through but be sure he at least thinks you are going through the list on a regular basis.

 

[Rodion15]

DNS services are one of the most ineffective methods. DNS is easily bypassed and just using vpn also bypasses it. Most people should be using encrypted DNS now that the OS itself supports it. This prevent anyone from snooping on the DNS requests.....including your own equipment.

If you want to go through the pain of a firewall that blocks all sites except for a list of approved ip addresses that will work. Manually putting in all the allowed IP is quite a core unless the list is small....like you only allow the IP addresses of work or school. The firewall must physically be protected.
Now things like time of day limitation are a bit easier than trying to restrict lists of sites.

Best option is the big stick approach. Tell him you are not blocking anything but are monitoring and if you find a violation you will put his computer in the dumpster. Key here is there has to be a actual penalty. Many routers allow you to get lists of IP addresses being accessed. It is a huge pain to manually dig through but be sure he at least thinks you are going through the list on a regular basis.

Thanks a lot. I'll consider that firewall option. Isn't a chromebox a good option, as I may control his google account. Unless he can bypass it by creating another google account, which I don't know.

 

[falcon291]

My 18yo son has hacked into all parental controls I set on his PC, to the point of installing bootable OS drives to bypass parental controls, he also used VPNs, etc, etc.

I thought a Chromebox may be the host hackproof parental controls system, and they're cheap. Am I right?

Unless I can use some DNS service like Cloudflare or similar, not sure if this would do the job.

Any advice much appreciated

He is an adult, and he will try harder. If he is able to physically access the computer, what you can do is very much limited.

I remember the days when my father hid the TV cable of my C=64. I found it near the condoms, as a 8th grader it took some time for me to understand what was in these packages.

 

[USAFRet]

This is a social issue, not technical.

Given physical access, he can do just about anything.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Assuming this is the US, he's legally an adult now, so I don't see why parental controls really matter here unless he lives with you and you want to impose all these rules on him. Which will more likely than not create resentment.

So yeah, as with what @USAFRet says, this is a social problem, not a technical one.

 

[Math Geek]

if he's already willing to use a portable OS, then there is nothing on the pc you can do or set to keep him honest.

anything would have to be done elsewhere in the network. and he's already shown he can get around most of that as well. other than a big stick and 20 minutes behind the woodshed, does not sound like there is much you can do really.

 

[punkncat]

Lol, I recall going through this and learned pretty readily that without also working your butt off chasing his work-arounds, there is very little you can do short of blocking specific sites within your router and/or online controls from your ISP of which he has no access.

The one that used to burn my chaps were proxies. MAN I hated how they just surf to such and such site and then use it to go where they wanted.

One of the best solutions I found (at the time) was to turn off wireless and had a switch on the network connection to the room that I could turn off. With todays smartphones being how powerful they are I am sure he could just use a hotspot and get around anything you do anyway.

I will toe a line to say that an adult conversation with your maturing son is probably going to be far more effective than trying to leash him. Other alternatives for adults living at home are "find your own place" type solutions.

Good luck