K9 is gone and there is no alternative in sight

Hello,


As some of you probably already know, K9 Web Protection was bought by Symantec?, and is therefore not available anymore. Plus, even if you have it already downloaded, they made an uninstall tool available (that doesn't require a password) which therefore the whole thing now completely useless.

The problem is, K9 was my only way to successfully avoid watching (and masturbating) to porn. I used to create a long password for admin panel, and then threw it away (or write it down on a paper and put it in some place where I would not bother going everytime I had a urge to watch porn). I managed to stay away for porn 3 or 4 months the beginning of this year, and began to notice some very positive changes in my ED condition.

Unfortunately this is now all gone. Symantec is now advertising for a $59.99  Norton Antivirus tool which supposedly includes a parental control similar to K9. I will obviously not purchase this.

I feel completely hopeless now with so hope of every recovering in sight despite about 8 years of already being plagued by this condition. I now doubt I will ever have a normal sexual life again.

I've looked at the alternative tools (https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/tools-for-change-recovery-from-porn-addiction/taming-your-computer-and-phone/) and honestly none of them seem to be as nearly as efficient as K9 was ; they all seem to be easy to bypass. 


So what is your opinion on this? Do you know any credible alternative ? I don't even need a full nudity blocker, just the ability to block some specific websites, on all browsers.

I'm sorry if this has already been discussed here, but this does not seem to be the case.

I'm sorry to hear this.  I knew it was bought by Symantec, but I didn't know that would mean it would be discontinued.  My first thought is that if Symantec bought it and discontinued it, then the features/programs/etc of K9 very well may still exist in the form of some other Symantec product having brought all that talent and licensing in house, otherwise I have no idea why they'd acquire K9 to begin with.  According to the K9 website, it is Norton AntiVirus Plus, but who knows if it is any good, or if the rest of the software is obtrusive and cumbersome, like other Norton products have been in the past.

K9 helped me during a critical part of my reboot, too.  It doesn't quit porn for you, but it gives you a sensible barrier, and a chance to ask yourself "do I really want to do this right now?", that, when taken among many, many other techniques and life changes, can be effective.  I did the same thing - I used a random password generator online which gave an impossible to memorize password, printed it on a piece of paper which was kept in another room so I'd have to physically track it down and type it in.  I wouldn't even get to copy and paste it because it wasn't on my computer anywhere after printing it.  The thing I loved the most about it is that for non-porn use, it was unobtrusive.  Every other filtering software (besides using safe search on Google) was a pain in the butt, slowed down my computer, or blocked things it didn't need to block.  Even YouTube had some sort of filtering feature that I tried, but it was filtering out things that weren't even remotely porn-like so I stopped using it.

Hi,

I would recommend taking a look at Pluckeye.net. I used K9 for a while as well and was so disappointed to see it go. Luckily, Jon has created an app that allows you to have so much more control and security than K9 did.

With this one the default is to block images and videos, but you can allow specific sites as well as completely block others. The way it works is instead of a password you set a delay that you must wait before a site is "allowed" to show images and videos. I had mine set to 5 minutes the first day until I got it all configured, and then went to 30 minutes, then 1 day.

Super simple, easy to use, and works well on Mac. Give it a try. I'm not a spokesman or anything, I am just a happy user.

Cheers

h.d.t. I saw your message after downloading Pluckeye. Looks pretty effective indeed, except for the fact that ALL images are blocked by default as you say.

I need some time to adjust the allow list and I will then set the delay to 1 day or such.

yes, it definitely takes some time to configure. Give it a day or two on a low-time limit, but after that it's definitely a great tool! Tell me how it goes.

@yolstoi. i know you doubt your ability to stay on track but.. did you relapsed since k9 is no longer or you are just very disappointed?

I did notice it too. Perhaps ColdTurkey can work for you?

https://getcoldturkey.com/

Its also free and works for Mac.

Bumping this thread.

I got an email a day or two ago from Norton saying that they were offering a steep discount on their program for people who had K9.  It is called Norton Family Premier, and it is likely whatever K9 was rolled into.  They are offering it for 9.99 for a year, discounted from 49.99.  I imagine you'd need to have gotten the email to qualify, but maybe not.  They might have another verification method.  It is worth checking those spam folders if nothing else!

Check ad guard. Adguard.com I use it now. Its a great free program to block porn!

I use coldturkey, it's a bit different than K9 and you have to be more serious about blocking stuff but it works well and you can use it for productivity also, like blocking social medias for a day, whereas K9 was more for "block it for life" kind of stuff (that's why you have to be more serious using coldturkey: you block stuff for a period of time.)

Also K9 had a much bigger database of porn sites to block.

I second pluckeye. It's a fantastic tool once you get it set up and you are used to how it works.