Help me teach my kid to be a pirate

Posted by Miserable_Initial732@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 9 comments

My 9-year-old son is getting interested in computers. And I want not only to encourage him and sign him up for programming courses, but also to let him make the mistakes we all made at some point. Download torrents, cartoon episodes, pirated software, cracked games, emulators, and all of that. To do this, I plan to give him a *disposable* machine. I'll set up content protections for 18+ material, explain the dangers of online predators, and that's it. Other than that, I want him to learn and deal with the consequences. So, here’s my question... What precautions can I take to isolate his machine and prevent the inevitable malware he’ll download from infecting everything else on the network? I know there are sophisticated malware types capable of doing that. Thanks!

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9 Comments

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voltix_it@reddit

Just, take away all precautions, tell him to be careful clicking on links and downloads of course keep the 18+ precaution but, just let your kid be a kid and you’ll find out if HE wants to be a pirate or not. I stopped doing all of that once I got a virus that when I woke up wouldn’t get my PC past a grey screen and when my dad took it to a shop they said it was Porn, I’d never watched that on my computer as I felt it was like the worst most crazy thing you could do.

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Tteeppss@reddit

Teaching a 9 year old kid programming is cool, but teaching them to pirate sounds like a really bad idea.

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DasPelzi@reddit

> mistakes we all made at some point. Download torrents, cartoon episodes, pirated software, cracked games, emulators, and all of that. Depending on the laws in your country some of the above "mistakes" might get YOU (as the contract partner with your isp) in legal trouble. > I'll set up content protections for 18+ Which type of content protection will you use that can detect if a pirated software or content of a torrent is 18+? You can use blocklists/whitelists for IPs and Domain names, filter search results and web addresses for specific words but if you give your kid access to sites where you can download pirated software he can also download 18+ software and movies/pictures. Isolating the computer from the rest of the network can e.g. be done when connection to a different (guest) wifi. Check if you router has the option to set up separated wifi networks. If possible and your router has the options you can also use cable connection with different VLANs and set firewall rules to block everything from the kids pc to the rest of the network. To be completely separated from you normal network, get an additional 4g/5g network connection only used for that computer. Depends what unlimited data options are available in your area. Use an extra 5G wifi router for that, don't connect any other devices in your home to that network. If you have a protentional unsecured and infected computer, don't connect your phones or other devices over usb to that computer. Don't use the same USB sticks/external Drives.

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ScreamOfVengeance@reddit

Show him how to setup firewalling on your router, a guest van.

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BackupFailed@reddit

I've the feeling this is a bad idea, I don't know. Weird. Anyways, put him in a isolated VLAN/firewall zone. Only allow access from VLAN -> WAN. Nothing should spread to your other devices, because they aren't reachable. You should be aware that you can be sued for anything he does, I think...

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