These instructions are to help contain (not ensure containing) the dangers of your kids' computer (not your teenagers', as they will be able to circumvent all of the following instructions. The best defense is to have an open dialog with your kids, so that when they do encounter trouble, you can be there to help them through it (you know, help them obtain life-long skills like decision making); and, it can't hurt to have them use a shared computer in a public location (i.e. family room desktop, not personal computer), so that you can be close by, and to remove temptations.
If you have Vista, just go to the Control Panel (in the Start button), and then under User Accounts, click Set up Parental Controls and then click on a standard user account and under Parental Controls, click On (which covers allowed times and web browsing); however, if you have Windows XP, read on: net user [username] [password] /times:[dayrange],[timerange]; replace [username] with the account you want to control. replace [password] with their password or put a "*" instead, in which case, you will be asked to type the password (in case someone knows how to scroll through previous commands) replace [dayrange] with the start and end day codes with a hyphen between them (or can just put one single day without hyphen): "M", "T", "W", "Th", "F", "Sa", or "Su" replace [timerange] with 12 hour (must have "AM" or "PM") or 24 hour and hyphen between the two times NOTE: you can have multiple schedules by adding on [dayrange],[timerange]; to the end of the statement. EXAMPLE: net user guest * /times:M-Th,9-17;F-Sa,9-24; and to clear restrictions: net user guest * /times:all
Now on to the browser; for Windows, just use Internet Explorer and the content advisor (i.e. not that they can't use another browser, just tell them to use this one). Go to the Start button, and Run..., and type "notepad" and hit Enter. Copy and paste the following:
(
(PICS-version 1.0)
(name "Fake")
(description "A fake rating service that doesn't rate anything.")
(rating-system "http://fake.rating.site")
(rating-service "http://fake.rating.site")
(category
(transmit-as "Please Use The Approved Sites Tab Instead!")
)
)
then go to the File menu (in Notepad) and select Save as, then type "fake.rat" (NOTE: include the quotes or your file will be saved as fake.rat.txt, which won't work) and pick C:\Windows\System32 as the location and click Save button. In Internet Explorer, go to the Tools menu, Internet Options, Content tab, and click Enable... button in the Content Advisor section; type in a password (please don't forget this; if you do, go to Start, Run..., and type "regedit" and Enter, then expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, then Software, then Microsoft, then Windows, then Current Version, then Policies; click on the Ratings folder, then on the right pane, right-click on "Key" and select Delete; restart the computer, go back to iexplore's Content tab and disable and leave the password blank and click OK (and then you can (re)enable and type in a new password)). Click on Settings (in the Content Advisor section), then click on the General tab and make sure "Users can see sites that have no rating" is *not* checked and leave "Supervisor can type a password to allow users to view restricted content" checked. Then click on "Rating Systems..." in the Rating Systems box and remove any listed here (select and click Remove button) and click the Add button and select "fake" and click OK and OK (to close the Ratings Systems box). Then click on the Approved Sites tab (in Content Advisor) and type in the URL of a site you want to allow and click Always. Keep adding sites that you know you want to allow (and you can always add sites on the fly by typing in the password when you enabled Content Advisor and select "Always allow this website to be viewed"); and, not that I'm sanctioning this, but check out ALA's list of websites for kids.
You can also batten down the search function (in any browser, but staying with Internet Explorer v7 (if you still have v6, go to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com)): click on the down triangle to the right of the search field (just to the right of the magnifying glass icon) in the upper right of the browser (where it might say "Live Search" in grey) and select "Find More Providers..." and click on the Yahoo! link (on the left) and check the box to "Make this my default..." and click Add Provider button. Then go to http://search.yahoo.com and click on the Options link (to the right of the search field) and then select Preferences. Find the SafeSearch section and click the Edit link (on the right) and select radio button for "Filter out adult Web, video, and image search results"; click the Save button (and note: you can sign in and check the lock button, but don't bother) and then click the Finished button. NOTE: if you would rather Google as your search engine, just select Google in the list after clicking Find More Providers and then go to google.com and click Preferences link, select the "Use Strict..." radio button in the SafeSearch Filtering area and click Save Preferences and OK.
You may also want to familiarize yourself with the browser history area: start by simply clicking on the down triangle to the right of the address field (where you would type a web address); or, Hold Ctrl and Shift and then type "h" and you will get a History pane on the left of the browser, that will break things down by day and then by week (or go to the Settings button and select Internet Options. Then in the Browsing history section (in the General tab), click the Settings button, then the View Files button (but this may be confusing; just use it as a helping aid to what your kid might be doing)).
OK, so you've restricted the time they can use it, and the browser is locked down a bit; so, you're on to chatting: Windows doesn't help out, so perhaps try Safe Chat Universal Messenger by Zihtec; or, I say just restrict incoming messages (to either a specific list or buddy list) or even log the chat sessions (which you can review upon suspition or if you child has a question about something). AOL Instant Messenger has such features (and works with the default iChat program for Mac OS users--just FYI as people with Mac OS computers tend to stay away from installing extraneous software). Once logged in (to AIM), go to the Edit menu and select Settings. Then on the left, find Privacy and you will see a radio button for "Only Allow Users Below" and then add whomever. Also note the "IM Logging" button in the list on the left (in case you want to do that).
If you've read some of the instructions and feel like this might be more than you can handle, you can always go for alert/monitoring tools like McGruff SafeGuard or try AOL's free parental controls. Good luck (i.e. God bless you).