How to Use Parental Controls on Windows 7. Without some layer of protection, your kids are exposed to all kinds of risks and dangers online. Even using the basic security features offered on your router, you probably aren’t doing as much as you could, which is where Windows parental controls come into play. NETGEAR genie. Managing your home network has never been easier! Get the most out of your home network with NETGEAR genie! Windows Vista, a major release of the Microsoft Windows operating system, was available in six different product editions: Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Business. Use a Software Restriction Policy (or Parental Controls) to stop exploit payloads and Trojan Horse programs from running. When you use a Standard User account on. How to Back Up Your Computer in Windows Vista. Backup steps to save individual files and folders, or the entire Windows Vista Operating System, are quite critical in. ![]() Microsoft began offering parental control with Windows Vista and has gradually improved them with each new version. Windows 7’s parental controls are pretty basic, but they’re effective and much better than having nothing at all. Plus, they can be used in conjunction with something like Open. DNS to filter websites and online activity. ![]() That’s the kind of peace of mind you need and using parental controls is a great way to at least stay on top of what’s going on within your home network. In this article, we’re going to talk briefly about implementing user accounts correctly, and then we’ll detail the parental controls baked into Windows 7. Editors' Note: This downloadable version of Windows Vista is an upgrade only. Users can only upgrade to Windows Vista Home Basic from Windows XP Home version. The Importance of User Accounts. You want to always make sure that every user has their own account, and they’re assigned the right type of account. For example, you don’t want your kids to have administrator accounts, they should definitely have standard accounts, which prevent users from installing applications and making changes to settings without admin privileges. Use Administrator Accounts with Care. When you first set up your primary Windows profile, it will be an administrator account. Thereafter, you will always have at least one administrator account on your computer. The administrator account is akin to having root access, meaning anyone with administrator privileges can do whatever they want: install software, change settings, and generally mess things up if care is not exercised. To that end, your administrator account should be minimally used and well protected by a nice, strong password. We recommend you use your admin account to install all the software you want on your system, and for everything else, use a standard account. ![]() From hereon, if you need to make any changes, such as installing a new application, you can elevate your standard account briefly by entering your admin password. Standard Accounts for Day- to- Day Use. Standard accounts are like admin- lite. Standard accounts let you use the computer normally but if you want to change security settings or make changes that will affect other users, you will need to provide an administrator’s password.
Standard accounts also prevent you from making mistakes, such as deleting important system files. In order to use a standard account, you first need to create or convert one to an administrator account. It’s not a terribly difficult process, but we have a nice little how- to on it if you need some help. For example, maybe you created two administrator accounts but, upon reading this, you decide you only want one. You can open the User Accounts control panel and convert any administrator account to a standard one, and vice- versa. When all is said and done, we recommend using a standard account for day- to- day use. Guest Accounts for Temporary Visitors. A guest account isn’t something you’ll personally use, and your family members should all have proper standard accounts secured with passwords. But, if you have a temporary house guest, or simply need to let someone access your computer to use the Internet, then they can use the guest account. In the end, you shouldn’t leave the guest account enabled, so remember to turn it off if you don’t need it. For a more thorough discussion of all things Windows- accounts- related, we recommend you check out this great article, which discusses user accounts and groups. Tying Accounts to Parental Controls. Before we talk about Windows 7’s parental controls, we need to explain how to assign accounts so that they work with them. Begin by opening Parental Controls from the Control Panel. In this screenshot, you see that when you open it, your accounts are displayed. You may have many more accounts, perhaps one for each family member. It’s important that you make changes to other accounts using an administrator account. If you try to do so using a standard account, you’ll be nagged to enter an administrator password each time you want to do anything meaningful. It’s no big deal, but it can be a pain after a while so it’s just easier to do all this as an administrator. The Parental Controls Included with Windows 7. In Windows 7, when you open the Parental Controls from the Control Panel, you’ll see a list of your accounts. We choose our standard user on our Windows 7 machine and the User Controls screen opens. The first thing you should do is actually turn on the parental controls, which will allow you to then set up restrictions for games and apps, as well as impose time limits on system use. If you don’t care about what they look at on the web or you have other means of controlling web access, then this might be enough for you. Alternatively, you could disable the web browser using the “allow and block specific programs” option, but that seems somewhat extreme since most kids use the Internet to conduct research for their academic studies. The best option outside of installing Family Safety, is to use a monitoring option such as Open. DNS. Imposing Time Limits on Computer Use. Time limits are great because a chief complaint of many parents is that their kids are always on their computers, sometimes to the detriment of their grades, family relations, and social circles. Regardless, if you want to scale back computer access to any user on your system, time limits are a great way to accomplish that. Setting up time limits is extremely simple. Choose blocks of time during which you want to prevent access. Note, you can only restrict use in hour increments on Windows 7 (on Windows 8. Game Controls Let You Restrict Gaming. If you have young ones who like video games, it can be difficult to know what they’re playing. A great many games these days are full of violence, profanity, and sexual content which, in a lot of cases, is extremely realistic and graphic. You can mitigate much of this risk by implementing game controls. Game controls depend upon ratings to work, so if someone tries to install and play a game that isn’t appropriate to your settings, they’re out of luck. To set the game ratings level, click “set game ratings” and you can choose how strict or loose the restrictions are. By default, you do this according to the Entertainment Software Ratings Board’s (ESRB) ratings, though you can choose a different ratings system if you prefer. Note, you can also block games that have no rating, which is nice because obviously if a game doesn’t have a rating, it could contain any kind of content. You can also click “block or allow specific games” for games that you want to override the ratings system you’ve implemented. In the screenshot below, you see you can leave a game to adhere to its rating, or explicitly block or allow specific titles. Even if you don’t care so much what your older children play, game controls are still a great way to curtail game playing if it’s becoming an issue, like if homework and chores aren’t getting done. You can block those games without having to completely block computer use, which is an effective compromise because homework is often dependent upon Google and Wikipedia. Setting Restrictions on Unwanted Applications. Finally, Windows 7 will let you limit programs to assigned users, so you can control or flat out stop unauthorized application use, such as the aforementioned web browser block, or block all applications except Word and Chrome, so the focus is on research and writing. Applying application restrictions is easy enough. Simply enable the option and then select the programs you want to explicitly allow. Once you’re finished, click “OK” and you’ll be returned to the Parental Controls settings screen where you can then review your actions. The main Parental Controls users screen will now reflect your changes. You now see that user “Matt” is a standard user with parental controls on, has no password set, time and program limits are enabled, and game ratings are set to “Everyone 1. Speaking of Passwords. We like to harp on this, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t remind you that it’s a wise idea to have passwords on all your accounts, even those used by your kids. That standard user “Matt” has no password should be be a big no- no. How or if you implement a password policy is completely up to you, just remember, if you have a poorly- secured admin account, anyone who accesses that account can change or remove passwords, alter your settings, and install anything they want. As far as the kids are concerned, passwords are important to not only protect their files, but instill good security habits. Take a moment to check out this article on securing user accounts and passwords in Windows if you want to learn more. Stick with it, or Upgrade. Compared to many popular parental controls packages available nowadays, the ones on Windows 7 are admittedly Spartan, but they get the job done, especially if your requirements are basic, or you use them in tandem with your router’s security features, or with Open. DNS. If you do require something with more powerful features, then you’ll want to use the downloadable Family Safety package, which probably begs the question, why not just use Family Safety in the first place? For one, the parental controls in Windows 7 are local, so you don’t have to use a web browser to implement them. Family Safety defers to an online interface, which requires an Internet connection to view reports and stats, change settings, add users, and more. Also, for many users, Family Safety might be a little overkill, so Windows 7’s parental controls may be sufficient. If you use or are planning to install Windows 8. Windows 1. 0), then you have no choice, Family Safety is standard. This isn’t a bad thing, Family Safety is actually a really effective product. Ways to Block Adult Sites. Open your Android's Play Store. It's a white app with a multicolored triangle on it. Tap . It's in the top- left corner of the screen. Tap Settings. This option is near the bottom of the pop- out menu. Tap Parental controls. It's near the top of the Settings page. Slide Parental controls right to the . This option is at the top of the page. It will turn green, signifying that you've enabled parental controls for the Google Play Store. Enter a four- digit PIN and tap OK. This will create a PIN for the parental control settings so that they cannot be modified without verification. Tap a parental control option. There are five categories here. Apps & games. Films. TVMagazines. Music. 8Tap a rating below 1. A on the rating slider. This vertical slider has options from G (most restrictive) up to Allow all. You'll want to tap G, PG, or 1. A. 9. Tap Save. This will save your content settings. Tap the . It's in the top- left corner of the screen. Repeat this process for each content category. Doing this will prevent your device from being able to access and download inappropriate content. Open Google Chrome. It's a red, yellow, green, and blue circular app. Tap . You'll see this icon in the top- right corner of the screen. Tap Settings. This option is near the bottom of the menu. Tap Privacy. It's just beneath the . This will enable safe browsing on Google Chrome, which means that your Android will no longer display adult sites or other.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
March 2018
Categories |