I have a colleague with two teenage boys (yes, cue cliche's about 'I have this friend see…') He's currently having issues with them browsing pr0n and wants to do a little spying on their browsing (I'm staying clear of the philosophies/ethics on this.) The kids are savvy enough to clear their browsing history when they're done. As I'm his goto for IT he has asked me if there is a way to keep a hold of the browsing history.
The family uses Macs, and the kids surf with Safari. I know that browsing history is kept here ~/Library/Safari/History.plist. I figure there should be a way to write either an AppleScript or other script (Python/Ruby/Bash) that can backup this file to a different location (/opt/local/history, etc.)
Since the kids know to clear their history when they're done should the file be periodically backed up with something similar to a cron job or something like Hazel? While that could work it seems like it would create a ton of little incremental backups.
Or is it possible to 'watch' ~/Library/Safari/History.plist and incrementally add changes to a backup file (saving a diff so to speak) but not lose any data?
Any ideas/solutions appreciated.
UPDATE/EDIT: Got the word from concerned dad that the oldest uses Firefox on a different PC, so the OpenDNS solution (preferably at the router level) is the best answer so far as it would capture usage for the whole house.
Best Answer
Easiest solution would be to open an account on OpenDNS and log the history through that. They won't be able to delete it.
If he finds it is a big problem, sites can also be blocked on OpenDNS.