Protect Your Children Online for Free

Protecting your children online can be a difficult task. It can also be expensive. We can eliminate much of the cost and confusion by using a combination of the tools built into Windows and two completely free programs. Our kid friendly PC will prevent children from installing programs without permission, block objectionable web pages and put chat under parental control.

We start by taking advantage of the tools in Windows. By creating separate limited user accounts for each child, you make protection much easier. The children's accounts should be limited user accounts that do not allow to the child to install or remove software. Having a separate account for each child will also give them there own personal space. They can have whatever background images or themes they want and spare you staring at a purple dinosaur all day. Microsoft provides highly detailed instructions on how to setup these additional accounts.

Filtering

There are a number of commercial Internet filtering technologies available to help keep kids safe online. In order to be effective and flexible, a good Internet filtering program needs to meet several criteria. While the programs we will be looking at are free, the same rules would apply when evaluating commercial software.

Parents Should Retain Control

Web filtering software should empower parents to make choices for their children, not hold them hostage to arbitrary standards set by the software. Good filtering software should clearly notify parents about what it will be blocking and provide parents the choice to allow or disallow content.

Adaptive

The web is a constantly changing environment. Filtering software that relies exclusively on lists of 'bad sites' or keywords may be effective today and useless tomorrow. At the very least, an effective filtering solution should include regular updates of sites to be blocked.

Browser Independent