[cookiecaper]

There's always a way around this kind of thing, that's just part of life. If someone is adequately determined to circumvent your restriction, they can almost always do so. You're correct that many children could just use the computer at a friend's house, but there's nothing we can do about that short of imposing IP and/or MAC restrictions on Facebook logins (parents could extract Facebook passwords, however, and login to their childrens' accounts independently). A router with adequate reporting capabilities would be a huge upgrade for most families, and it's becoming increasingly important to place this kind of monitoring on the network side given the ever-growing preponderance of mobile devices.

[whatwhatwhat]

The article seems to be linkbait anyways, but if it were true I would be entirely against it -- I am just pointing out where the argument for home network monitoring falls short when both parties are aware of the monitor being there. I suppose the key to having one, for a parent, or for someone building one, would be to leave a kid completely unsuspecting.

[nitrogen]

I suppose the key to having one, for a parent, or for someone building one, would be to leave a kid completely unsuspecting.

If I were a parent installing monitoring software, I think I'd tell my kids exactly what the software monitors, show them the logs, and teach them a way to get around it that logs access times but not content. I would say, "If you need to hide something from me, that's cool, but I'm going to know that you hid something and I'm going to ask about it, so keep that in mind." The purpose of the monitoring software would be to provide an opportunity to analyze the potential consequences of my kids' online activities.

Of course, imagining and doing are very different things, so ask me again in n years after I've actually started a family and see if I actually followed my own advice ;).