Is There Such A Thing As Effective Parental Controls?

There’s an interesting thread over on Slashdot about parental controls on PCs. Obviously, the crowd on Slashdot is a bit more technical than your average parents. Good thing, as I am in that crowd.

Parental Controls are often seen as a substitute for good parenting. They aren’t. Because the kids will eventually find a way to subvert it. That being said, you can do a few things to make it a bit more difficult.

Here’s what I do on my family computers, which are all running Windows XP:

Computers In Public Rooms: The kids activities can easily be monitored by good old fashioned parental oversight–the most effective form of parental control.

Limited Accounts: The children use Limited Accounts in XP. This has all kinds of interesting benefits:

Some Flash games require third-party add-ons, which only I (with full Admin rights) can install. Gives me a chance to check out the games before they play them
Applications can’t be installed. It doesn’t prevent you from running a self-contained EXE, but those are rare.
If any rogue software does run, the damage it can do is much more limited thanks to the limited permissions.

Windows Update: It runs in full automatic mode. The computers often get left on so they have a chance to download and install whatever patches Microsoft throws us.

AntiVirus: It’s always a good idea to have AntiVirus loaded. I’ve settled on the free version of Avast.

Web Filtering: At the moment, the web filter is meant to prevent my young children (3 and 7) from accidentally stumbling onto something they shouldn’t see. They may bump into it more and more as they get older. The one I’m using? K9 Web Protection from Blue Coat. It’s free and relatively noninvasive. If you hit an objectionable site, your browser prevents you from accessing it but gives you the chance to provide the override password.

At some point in the future, I may start monitoring–but not restricting–other network activities. However, that’s going to require some planning.

What things do to you do to protect your kids online?

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This entry was written by PhoneBoy and posted on 18 October 2007 at 12:01 am and filed under security. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment(Latest is displayed first) or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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2 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

Active Directory is overhead I don’t want. I solve the printing problem by not configuring the accounts to print. Until they start using the computers for actual school work, I have no intention of configuring the printers for them.

1. PhoneBoy on October 18th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
First and foremost, there is no substitute for parental involvement if you are going to let your children use a computer connected to the Internet. I often find myself playing the same games, like Lego’s, on my own PC.

As an IT guy myself with 4 young children all under the age of 10 I use Microsoft Active Directory and Group Policies to only allow my children the following:

• 30 minutes of computer “log in” time per day. Once minute 30 hits, they are logged out.
• They only have access to “trusted” Internet sites listed in Group Policy.
• Limited Windows XP accounts. Each child has their own Active Directory login, the same as the one they use at school for consistency.

The one thing I don’t limit, but would like too, is their ability to print to both the color and black & white laser. I don’t view this as a “security risk” so it’s on the bottom of the to-do list.

2. Eric Hanke on October 18th, 2007 at 8:08 pm

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By Ghillie Suits » Is There Such A Thing As Effective Parental Controls? on 18 October 2007 at 1:02 am

[…] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerpt Microsoft throws us. AntiVirus: It s always a good idea to have AntiVirus loaded. I ve settled […]

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