In the past, Microsoft Windows has been criticized of having too many security loopholes. These loopholes have been exploited by virus developers to infect computers running various versions of Windows. One of the main reasons for this problem to come up is the level of permissions granted to every user who makes use of the system. Generally, all users are allowed to perform a large number of potentially dangerous actions regardless of whether they have administrator privileges or not. This could lead young novice users such as children to gain access to inappropriate content or to malicious programs and websites that could cause damage to your system. It could also lead them to make contact with dangerous people who could compromise the safety of not only your computer, but of your family as well.
Windows Family Safety has been designed by Microsoft with these problems in mind. It provides a comprehensive suite to manage everything that the users of a Windows system do by a single administrative user, i.e. you.
To setup Windows Family Safety, visit http://download.live.com/familysafety and download its setup file, which is available for free. Once you have installed Family Safety, it will require you to create a new administrator account for yourself as well as user accounts for your family members. At the point of account creation itself, you, as the administrator, can set the access levels for each user. The most useful features provided by Windows Family Safety are:
• Web access management – You can use web filtering to limit the content that each user can view. This is a simple process of categorically setting which types of content you want to block the user from, and Windows Family Safety will identify web content according to these content categories, which saves you a lot of hard work. When a user visits a website that they really want to access (or is harmless and has been included in that particular category by mistake), they can e-mail a request to the administrator, or ask them in person to be allowed to access that website.
• Contact Management – This feature can be used to manage who your children talk to on Windows Live Spaces, Messenger and Hotmail. You can choose which contacts are available for communication with the users of the computer, and monitor new contacts as well.
• Activity Reports – This feature can be used to monitor what the users have been doing on the computer. Detailed activity reports show the programs that each user has been running, the amount of time spent on the computer by each user and the websites they have visited.
• Anywhere Access – What happens if you want to change your Windows Family Safety settings while you’re away? Windows Family Safety allows you to change your settings online from the Family Safety website. This is extra useful if you are away from your family for long periods of time.
Although there have been claims that user-controlled security is dangerous for a system, it is evident that Windows Family Safety is one of the best tools you have available to keep your Windows operating system and your family both safe in cyberspace.
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