Help for Parents with Children and MySpace.com

Chapter 1
What is MySpace
Is MySpace.com Bad?
How will this report help me

Chapter 2
More Details on MySpace.com

Chapter 3
Preparing Yourself for MySpace.com

Chapter 4
Finding Your Child's Profile

Chapter 5
Advanced Ways to Search

Chapter 6
Create Your Own Profile

Chapter 7
MySpace Pages and Info on Them
Sample Survey placed on MySpace.com

Chapter 8
What else is on MySpace.com?

Chapter 9
Changing Privacy Settings
Removing Personal Info from MySpace

Chapter 10
Advanced Ways to Hide Information

Chapter 11
Restricting Access to MySpace.com

Chapter 12
Using Filtering Software to Block Access

Chapter 13
Common Abbreviation and Acronyms
Mature Acronyms

Conclusion
Guidelines for Parents and Teens

References for Parents

 

Chapter 11: Restricting Access to MySpace.com

If talking to your child and monitoring their activities on MySpace is not enough, then you may want to consider restricting access to MySpace. Be warned, however, kids will be kids and many of them will go to a friends house or gain access another way if you decide to prevent access to MySpace from your home.

Using a Hosts file

To block MySpace.com follow these steps to add it to the computers hosts file.

1) Click on Start, Run
2) Type in the following command and press Enter

For Windows XP type:
notepad C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\HOSTS

For Windows 2000 type:
notepad C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\HOSTS

For Windows 98/ME type:
notepad C:\WINDOWS\HOSTS

For Mac OS 9: look in System Folder:Preferences for the Hosts file and use a text editor to add the additional lines.

For Mac OSX: look for the hosts file in /etc/hosts

3) Notepad should open with a text file that looks something like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost


4) Add the following lines to the hosts file so the host file looks like the following:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 myspace.com
127.0.0.1 www.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 addressbook.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 blog.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 browseusers.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 bulletin.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 collect.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 events.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 favorites.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 forum.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 groups.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 home.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 invite.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 mail.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 music.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 musicsearch.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 profile.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 profiles.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 search.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 signup.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 topartists.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 vids.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 videos.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 viewmorepics.myspace.com

5) Click on File and Save to save the new hosts file

6) Now try to go to http://www.myspace.com and see what happens

Host files are only one way to try to block access to myspace.com or other objectionable web sites, but are they really the answer?

Because host files can only block sites based on domain names, they don’t block access to pure IP addresses. For instance, if you block myspace.com and www.myspace.com in your hosts file your teen could still access it by typing the following into the address bar of the browser:

http://63.208.226.43

Try it and you’ll see it goes directly to MySpace.com. All domain names resolve to an IP address located on a server where the particular domain is hosted. So typing in the IP address of the site is the same as typing in the domain name.

This brings us to the next way to prevent access to MySpace.com or other sites: parental filtering software.