Parental Controls for XP

Does anyone know of a good, peferably free Internet/General PC Parental Control utilitys?

I'm starting to get a complex, I keep posting questions and comments and no one replies.... [C]

Kryptos wrote:



Does anyone know of a good, peferably free Internet/General PC Parental Control utilitys?

Did anyone not see this coming?

http://daol.aol.com/safetycenter/parentalcontrols

Who are you protecting the computer from (how knowledgable are they of computers?)?

Are you wanting to block access to things like "Run", "cmd.exe", etc., along with websites?

Angus Higgins

Thanks Cybermagellan.....

I'll download and have a play to ensure it fits my needs, which so far it does....

Hi Angus, thanks for the reply....

Just websites and a report of which ones have been visited would be good, so you can look at the list and ban sites based on that as it can be difficult to predict what people are going to browse for....

I don't use them (or like them) myself, but here's a matrix comparing all the majors: http://www.child-internet-safety.com/internet_filters.php  Seems like $40-$50 is the going rate.  None of the ones listed on this site are free.

Disclaimer: I can't vouch for this site.  For all I know, they're funded by the one who ranked highest.  I simply Googled for products I knew about (Cyber Sitter, Net Nanny, and Cyber Patrol) and found this comparrison.  Hopefully this will help you with your research.

My opinions may change as my 4-year-old ages , but in general, I tend to dislike the concept of these filters.  I think parental involvement in the child's computing is preferable.  My son's computer is in our office -- not his room -- where my wife or I look over his shoulder when he is online.  Plus, as he gets older, I'm not so concerned about him finding 'inappropriate content' online -- I feel it's (mostly) as harmless as a boy leafing through his father's 'Playboy' magazine.  If my son trusts me, I hope he will come to me with any questions about things he stumbles across online (or things his friends might email him).

I am concerned about Internet predators and viruses.  For the latter, my son runs with a least-privilege user account, and we run antivirus and antispyware.  For the former, he isn't into chatting yet, but I think the chat programs have an option to log all conversations.  If he is not an admin, he won't be able to change those settings -- and my wife and I could read the chat logs periodically to know if he's making questionable contacts.  Also, education with the child about who they should talk to and who they shouldn't is warranted.  I don't mean to be paranoid (I'm reminded of the lost kid who hid from the search party because of his fear of 'stranger danger'), but I think we need to educate our kids -- just like you wouldn't accept candy from strangers, don't IM with strangers, either, and tell mom and dad if anyone tries to contact you.

My two cents,

Yep I agree with you comments 100%. This is for a shop where they have 18 and 19 old's "messing" about with the PC, so I thought about employing basic Parental Controls on it.

Sorry didn't mean to mis-lead anyone.

Kryptos wrote:

Yep I agree with you comments 100%. This is for a shop where they have 18 and 19 old's "messing" about with the PC, so I thought about employing basic Parental Controls on it.

For that sort of thing, I wouldn't use parental controls, but something alone the lines of Group Policy. But don't some parental-control softwares just enable GP settings?

But I'm guessing these are XP Home machines? Slight problem then.

See if you can log HTTP activity at the router rather than the client, it's more impervious to smart-aleky teenagers (much like myself) that way.

It's XP Pro, One PC and USB Modem.... They don't want to spend money on this.... No Sever.

So you can control HTTP activity just using GP.

If you want to stop them changing settings on the computer, along with the obvious things, block access to "Help"; I can tell you this because at my school people use the access to "Help" (on the Start Menu) as an exploit which allows them to change mouse settings, mes about with the keyboard (change the language, or change to DVORAK) and also open up Narrator, which causes madness.

I don't know an application that could do this though.

Angus Higgins

Yep I've can do that very easliy with Win2k3 Server and group policy. They just want to see what they are browsing and stop they going to non-allowed sites.

W3bbo's idea of using a router is not a bad one, I hand't thought about that, I think I may be able to sell that idea..... food for thought.