Keep kids safe with Vista's Parental Controls

For young children and teenagers, the internet is a great place to explore for researching school projects and bringing topics to life. However, alongside the vast number of reputable websites offering educational and fun content there are many hosting unsavoury material.

This places parents in a dilemma: how do you offer children the advantages of the internet, while protecting them from the unsavoury material that lurks in cyberspace?

To solve this problem there are numerous programs on the market designed to help parents control their children’s computer use. But, for owners of PCs running Microsoft’s Vista, there is some good news as it comes with tools designed specifically to help parents manage their children’s computer and internet use.

The controls built into Windows Vista aim to help parents monitor and control all aspects of children’s PC activity. They include tools to manage what games can be played, so that games with an age rating inappropriate for a specific user will be blocked.

Similarly the controls can be set to determine which programs can be used, which websites can be visited — and when. The tools can even lock the computer for certain users at specific times ­ so the increasing number of children with a PC in their bedroom can’t use it when they’re meant to be in bed.

Preparing and activating these tools, collectively called Parental Controls, is straightforward and they are available in Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium and Ultimate.

Set up user accounts
Before doing anything you must set up standard user accounts for each child, as these are required to get the most from Vista’s Parental Controls. After accounts are assigned to each individual computer user, it is a simple matter of establishing rules that will control what the user of each account is permitted to do. Note that Parental Controls can only be applied to standard user accounts, not administrator accounts.

To set up accounts for your children press the Start Button and start typing ‘Parental Controls’ ­ – Vista will display the application in the list above the search window, so click it to launch. You can also access Parental Controls from the Control Panel in the Start menu.

A window appears showing your user account ­ you need to have an administrator account to set up new accounts. If the label beneath your name does not say ‘Computer administrator’, then you will need to set up Windows User Accounts. Also note that the administrator account must be password-protected to prevent children from removing any restrictions you apply.

At the bottom of the Parental Control screen is the ‘Create a new user account’ option. Click it and Vista displays a screen that requests a name for the new account. Add the child’s name and leave the box labelled ‘User must set password at next logon’ ticked if you want to let an older child choose their own password. For younger children, it may be easier to untick this box so they don’t have to type in a password.

Click ‘Create account’ to display the main User Controls screen, which enables you to set sensible limits for your youngsters. First click the option labelled ‘On, enforce current settings’.

Underneath this option is a section marked Activity Reporting, which gives you the option to view reports detailing all PC activity carried out by the child using this account. Such monitoring can be valuable as it enables parents to refine and modify controls based on actual usage.