Last week we asked you to share your favorite method of filtering internet content.

While we originally intended to approach the topic from a software angle, it quickly became apparent that software didnt cut it for most people and that the majority of you are using either a combination of desktop software and a proxy serverfirewall or just the latter by itself.

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The following solutions range, in difficultly of installation, from as simple as requiring five minutes to install to as complex as setting up a physical computer as a Linux-based content filter.

Advertisement Best Content Filtering Software Despite the fact that the internet is quite mainstream, its hardly lost its Wild West ways.

Which Read more DansGuardian (Cross Platform, Free) GO Media may get a commission Super Mario 3D All-Stars Buy for 60 from Best Buy One way to measure whether or not Dansguardian is the right filtering tool for you is your willingness to install and tinker with an operating system like Linux.

Dansguardian runs on Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Mac OS X, HP-UX, and Solaris.

DansGuardian is extremely configurable and allows you to do all sorts of things, like block all images, filter ads out across your entire home network, block files from being downloaded by extension type, and control the effects of the filters, whitelists, and more based on which computer on your network is doing the accessing.

You can deploy different filters for different computers based on domain, user, and source IP so your high school student doesnt get the same ultra-filtered content your elementary student does.

DansGuardian needs to be paired with a proxy as it doesnt serve the web pages itself but only acts as a filtermany users use Squid, also mentioned in the entry for SquidGuard.

K9 (WindowsMac, Free) Advertisement Many of us have had experiences with K9s internet filtering, if for no other reason than its used in thousands of schools across the country.

One of K9s strong points is the division of filtered content into 60 categories which allows you to easily block and unblock large chunks of their blacklist without having to get your hands too dirty.

K9 is a desktop solution; you install the software and it checks all the internet requests you make against the filters you have specified.

In an effort to overcome the limitations of working from a static database, K9 introduced Dynamic Real-Time Rating to actively access the content of websites and ban them if they fall into the filter categories youve selected.

OpenDNS (Cross Platform, Free) Advertisement OpenDNS is a perfect solution for people who either lack the time or expertise to set up and administer a full-out content-filtering server.

OpenDNS replaces your current DNS server and allows you to filter every connection coming out of your house if you change the DNS settings at the router level.

No matter if someone is on your main desktop or connecting into your wireless via laptop, everything will be filtered by OpenDNS.

You can set custom filters to white list and black list specific sites and customize the range of filters they provide for you.

If youre considering using OpenDNS as your household filter, check out our previous article on the topic.

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Turn OpenDNS into a Parental Filter You can spend hours figuring out how to lock down every browser in the house to prevent the nets Read more Advertisement SquidGuard Squid (Linux, Free) Advertisement SquidGuard is similar to Dansguard in that it is a stand alone filtering tool you connect into with a proxyin this case the popular Squid proxy.

Also like Dansguard, you have a high degree of flexibilitydream up a combination of filtering parameters and theres a good chance you can make it happen with SquidGuard.

No Hello Kitty between the hours of 9AM and 10PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays Not a problem with the highly customizable SquidGuard.

SquidGuard is natively a UNIX-environment only tool, and you can install it onto Linux, FreeBSD, and so forth.

Hosts File (Cross Platform, Free) Advertisement Many of you like to get your hands dirtyas evidenced by the popularity of Dansguard and SquidGuardand tinkering with the hosts file is a great way to do that while setting up a filter in the process.

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