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Gadgets & Gear: Keeping Your Kids Safe Online

Are you a parent with kids still at home? Do they have easy access to the computer? Are you worried about what they see on the internet or how long they are on there; or worse yet, what damage they can do to your computer? Heck, I worry when my WIFE is on there, and she is an adult, albeit a technically-challenged adult (except when it comes to finding shoes online). Well, if you haven’t updated your computer’s operating system to Vista yet, Microsoft has given parents a huge reason to upgrade.

With Vista, Microsoft embedded parental controls that were either impossible to find or completely absent from previous editions. Now that kids can instant message their nursery-mates before they even leave the hospital after they are born, (Hey, which of those people at the window is yours? I hope mine aren’t that funny looking couple that keeps looking at me or I’ll never make it on America’s Next Top Model!) the tools are all the more needed. While not perfect, they put in a lot of powerful tools for parents to use and make it much easier.

So what kind of things does Vista let you control? You can now restrict specific websites they can view, or limit access to age-appropriate websites; you can allow or deny downloads; and also set up filters to block certain content from all sites. You can also set time limits for how long they are allowed to be on the computer by blocking off time periods that are open for use. You can also block certain games from being played. If you think it is okay for Katie to play Grand Theft Auto, but don’t want little Jimmy playing it just yet, you can set that up. You can also block other specific programs from running, like your tax software, for instance (I would hate it for little Jimmy to buy you an extended visit from the IRS).

The great thing about all these tools is that they are easy to use, easy to set up, and you can tailor the restrictions to individual accounts. This way, your account is the system administrator (with a nice strong password), and you can set up individual accounts for each of your children with age appropriate restrictions. You can also change the restrictions at any time and override restrictions instantly when the program blocks something that perhaps it shouldn’t have.

These restrictions do have limits, though, mostly with the blocked content from websites. It can be hard to judge what is offensive to everybody. I would make every image and word about Paris Hilton eradicated from view if I was writing software, but hey, that’s just me.

Overall though, it does a decent job of keeping your kids from the worst of the stuff, though some stuff can still pop up at times. If you want tight control over what your children can see, you can specify exactly which sites they can view and block all the rest.

Another great tool tied into all of these settings is a report you can receive that shows you what programs your child accesses, websites they visited and even what they TRIED to access, and how long they were on the site. George Orwell would be so proud! While stopping short of a full-on keystroke logger, this report can give you a good picture of what your child is doing on the computer when you aren’t looking over their shoulder.

Speaking of a keystroke logger, if you are really concerned about what your child is doing online or what they are ‘saying’ and to whom, these programs can tell you everything their little fingers punched into that keyboard. Hopefully your only shame from reading these logs is that you’ll find your little munchkin is a horrible speller, but if by the off chance they are the one out of those five kids that are solicited inappropriately online, you can find out early before it goes too far.

If you find all this ‘spying’ on your kids to be a little too akin to reading their diary, it is. Unfortunately, in this day and age, with instantaneous communications, you really have to be on top of these things. Now this isn’t to say that you have to do this for all of your children, which is the beauty of those individual accounts. Your teenager might be very responsible and need very little restrictions, while your elementary age children might need a little more restriction to keep them from the things they won’t, or shouldn’t, understand. All these are great options with the Vista system.

So, what should you do if you aren’t ready to completely overhaul your computer’s operating system? There are several programs out there that can do many of the things that Vista’s new controls can do. The two biggest names in parental control software, Content Watch and Net Nanny, have combined under the Net Nanny name, and their software is very highly regarded. There is also another program called CyberPatrol that is available, though it seems to be a bit more difficult to manage than either Vista controls or Net Nanny.

You can find these programs in some software stores and online at www.netnanny.com and www.cyberpatrol.com. Both of these third-party programs are geared primarily to blocking web content and tracking Instant Messaging clients. They do have some tools for controlling program access on the computer.

If you aren’t ready to get one of these third-party programs, I would encourage you to at least check out the settings that are available in your Internet Explorer. Under the “Tools” section of the toolbar, locate the Internet Options selection under that is a tab for content settings. This will allow you to at least set up some basic security measures for your child while they are online.

Now that I am done ratting out all the kids in the tri-county area, I’ve got to get to work on my own computer so I can block my wife from getting to all those shoe sites! As always if you have any questions on this or any other tech topic, feel free to write me at: jeff@healthandleisureonline.com.