I will do anything in my power to protect my children from online ads. At home it’s very simple with your basic adblockers and Pihole.
In the 5th grade my daughter got a laptop from school, it was a quite decent Thinkpad. She brought it home to do some presentation and went to her room. After few minutes she brought the laptop to me and said: “Dad, I think there’s a virus or something like that in my computer.”
The only web browser installed was Edge, without any kind of ad blockers. My kid had assumed that the hideous intrusive ads were some form of malware attack. I installed Firefox on her laptop with all the proper tweaks and disabled Edge as best as I could. All the Windows ad and telemetry options were also on, I disabled everything that was possible. I also showed how different themes can be installed, we ended up with a classic Nyan Cat ;)
When she took the laptop back to school I told her that Edge is not to be used. Firefox can handle everything and if the teacher has some issue with this, I am happy to come and explain this in person.
Now my daughter’s laptop is apparently the only ad free machine in her class and the other kids have openly expressed their envy. Why the school IT-department had not installed adblockers and had left the Windows telemetry on is simply baffling. No one should have to watch ads, but kids in school should be especially protected from this crap.
I will do anything in my power to protect my children from online ads. At home it’s very simple with your basic adblockers and Pihole.
In the 5th grade my daughter got a laptop from school, it was a quite decent Thinkpad. She brought it home to do some presentation and went to her room. After few minutes she brought the laptop to me and said: “Dad, I think there’s a virus or something like that in my computer.”
The only web browser installed was Edge, without any kind of ad blockers. My kid had assumed that the hideous intrusive ads were some form of malware attack. I installed Firefox on her laptop with all the proper tweaks and disabled Edge as best as I could. All the Windows ad and telemetry options were also on, I disabled everything that was possible. I also showed how different themes can be installed, we ended up with a classic Nyan Cat ;)
When she took the laptop back to school I told her that Edge is not to be used. Firefox can handle everything and if the teacher has some issue with this, I am happy to come and explain this in person.
Now my daughter’s laptop is apparently the only ad free machine in her class and the other kids have openly expressed their envy. Why the school IT-department had not installed adblockers and had left the Windows telemetry on is simply baffling. No one should have to watch ads, but kids in school should be especially protected from this crap.
She was spot on.