Using Parental Controls in Windows Vista

Parental Controls are a new feature built into Vista. Vista now lets you set, per user account, what games and hours that user (in particular) is allowed. You will have to create individual accounts, however, for multiple settings to be used. For instance, you can have an account that is not effected by parental controls, and then one for your son who is 16 years old, and another for your daughter who is 8. This also allows you to fine-tune the settings based on their priviledges!

Vista offers the following controls, in addition to Internet Explorer's built-in Parental Controls:

• Windows Vista Web Filter

This controls what websites, downloads and other miscellaneous web usage is allowed.

• Time limits

This controls time curfews on computer usage, in case you are not around to enforce it.

• Games

This setting allows you to limit what type of games can be played on this particular user account.

• Allow and Block Specific Programs

This setting allows you to prevent any other activity in case it doesn't fall in Vista's guidelines, and for other manual fine-tuning.

Vista also has a feature called Activity Viewer, which will show you the top-ten websites visited, blocked, as well as file downloads and attempted (blocked) downloads, any games played (though web-based games have to be managed through the Vista Web Filter), e-mail and instant-messaging events as well. This feature can be engaged independantly of all other parental controls.

To begin using Parental Controls in Vista, simply:

1. Click the Start Orb and left-click on Control Panel. This will bring up a new window.
2. Within this window, double-left click on User Accounts. The window will change into the User Controls window.
3. On the left hand pane, single left-click Parental Controls. (this is usually found under See Also: Parental Controls at the bottom-left corner of your screen) This may take a minute to load, so be patient. A "User Access Control" window may come up as well, if it does, click Continue.
4. From the Parental Controls window, click on the account you wish to apply new controls to. If one does not exist, here is your opportunity to create a new one via the control at the bottom labeled Create a new user account. Otherwise, click on the account you wish to work on.
5. The controls for that specific account will come up. Most of them will be grayed out, to start. To enable the other controls, simply click On, enforce current settings under Parental Controls.
6. Once On, enforce current settings is enabled, the rest of the window lights up. To go into the details of each feature, simply click on the words that are lit up for that option, and to enable, disable, and customize the strength of each setting to your liking. Also, note that you can come back here any time to customize filtering if it is too strict, not strict enough or if your teenager has just been grounded!

A quick summary of available features:

Vista Web Filter

Beneath this setting you will find the ability to block all, or only some specific, web content. If you choose to block only some, you can then edit a block list to add and remove blocked content. If you choose not to block specific content, you can utilize a built-in web restriction level which will attempt to sort out content for you. If you choose "Custom", you will get a front end that allows you to choose what content the user of this account should and should not be seeing. Note that this is not foolproof as new websites come out every day, but it should block a very high degree of them. Lastly, you can choose to block or allow downloads on this account.

Time Limit

This option will give you a week-style calendar in which you can click to block a specific time period (in increments of one hour). Click that square again to unblock it. This account will not be able to log on during the blocked periods!

Games

This option allows you to choose which installed software may be launched from this user account. You can block all games, or a varying setting based on user age. This works with Vista-capable software to judge what that game's setting is. If you are concerned about a piece of software in particular, you can also block it using this section of parental controls.

Allow and Block Specific Programs

This section defines whether the user can use all programs (with the exception of those listed above), or ones that are specifically allowed, also known as a whitelist.

View Activity Reports

If you've enabled this feature for this user account, you may come back to this section under your profile to view activity reports. This will give you a summary of that user's latest activity, such as web sites visited, attempted downloads, logon times, and programs that have been run.

I sincerely hope that this introduction to Vista's Parental Controls has been helpful to you. If you believe it has, please consider forwarding this website to your friends, so that they too might get the most out of their computer!