I did have Spector (stealth observation program) installed and found that still didn't curtail the bad activity since most of the filtering systems weren't foolproof. He somehow figured out how to make that no longer work too. I contacted the company and they sent me a back door but it doesn't work now either.
If it were someone else's child, i'd be impressed!
I'm not be a parent, and I'm not that far out of college myself actually. But as someone who regrettably has to play nanny for 18-21 year olds who haven't had the chance to grow up, I implore you: please, please,
please reconsider your strategy.
As part of my job, I deal with kids like this all the time, unfortunately. It's not
officially part of my job. I was hired to do more constructive work, really. But being in a university setting, dealing with Billy Freshman and his destructive online behavior is an inevitable part of the task.
What kinds of destructive behavior? Oh... aside from the typical script kiddie and hacking stuff, there's things like online harassment complaints. Online drama that gets a little too dramatic. Excessive bandwidth usage causing a performance hit in a portion of a subnet because someone is downloading copious amounts of porn.
Oh and then there's the not-as-rare-as-I'd-prefer complaint from a public computer lab user, who unfortunately was seated next to Billy Freshman as he's visiting adult sites. In the public lab. And is being none too discreet about it, too.
A lot of times, the more serious incidents come with big consequences. Those who do this stuff often end up on academic probation either because they seriously violated the university's Accetable Use Policies, or because they spent so much time looking at all the bad stuff on the net that their grades suffered horribly. And sometimes, for both reasons.
And it seems like the vast majority of these situations, it seems to stem from the fact that internet access was simply restricted via software at home. No specific guidance from the parents. No attempts at education or intervention. They were simply told by their parents that the Internet was this very very bad and dangerous thing, and they weren't allowed access to it.
So what do these kids do when they go to college? Well, they gain 20-50 pounds (the "freshman 20") because after having to eat whatever their parents gave them for 18 years, they can now eat whatever they want, whenever they want. And more importantly: they see that high speed ethernet jack or wireless access point in their dorm (or worse, that public computer lab), and they
binge, on all of the stuff that they were told was taboo and that they weren't allowed to see at home. Because after being strictly denied, now they can go anywhere on the internet they want, and stay there as long as they want, and do whatever they want to do and act however they want to act.
I can certainly understand and even advocate heavy restrictions on Internet access up to about age 16 or so. But once the kids start getting close to the time where they're looking at colleges, the continued restrictions - from what I've seen anyway - have a very negative effect in the long run. It only teaches them two things:
1. They HAVE to visit those naughty sites as SOON as they have the ability to do so!, and
2. They learn how to be holy hacker terrors on networks like mine. Those filter-circumvention skills translate into very adept network security-breaching skills later. And then people like me are left to deal with it.
And at the same time, these kids are NOT taught how to be good net-citizens, and lack any level of maturity. And that's really a shame.
I really think these same people would act a bit more appropriately if they had gotten a bit more supervised education (once they reached the age to understand it) about what's online, what to avoid, what they shouldn't be seeing and why.
I realize your kid has ADHD. However, I submit that unless he gets that attention, education and supervision from you, then you're only delaying what you're trying to avoid altogether. I know you're trying to protect him, but the way he sees it, all you're doing is trying to block him from seeing what he wants to see. You and I BOTH know that this only will succeed in making him fixate HARDER on those things, and on ways to get at what he wants. Instead of his grades suffering in high school, he could gorge on the net once he leaves for college, and then his grades will just crash there instead.
And recovering from bad grades in college is a lot harder than doing so in high school.
At this point, I would forget about the monitoring and filtering software and removing the airport card and all that, and instead take the computer OUT of his room and into a family area. If he wants to go online, he should do it where the family can interact with him. This will take his focus OFF trying to get around the things you've done to restrict his net access, and will instead drive the point home that if he wants to be on the 'net, he's gotta do it in ways that are family-friendly, and non-destructive.
Don't turn this into a punishment either. He wants net access that badly? Fine, he wins. But that net access will be in your presence.
In the end, the most effective filtering software is him knowing that you could glance at his screen at any time and see what he's doing, and not in a threatening "I have this software and can peek in" kinda way, but a "other people are in the room with you, and you should act accordingly" kinda way.
