Websites Filtering and Activity Reports.

In this post you will learn how to do website filtering and activity reports in Windows 7.
If you go to control panel - user accounts family and safety - parental controls you will see that web filtering and activity reports are not included. in windows 7, but no worries we will fix that by installing "windows essentials"to your computer. To do so go to official Microsoft website and download the installer. 
Once you have it downloaded go ahead and install it. If you chose "express install" that will install following:

• Microsoft SkyDrive
• Mail
• Writer 
• MSN
• Photo gallery and movie maker 
• Family Safety

At this time our concern is family safety and if for some reason you don't want to install rest of the apps than while installing choose advanced installer and have unchecked everything but "Family Safety".

Once family safety installed you will see additional options available inside parental controls - control panel.

You will be asked to input your Microsoft account user name and password to start. You can use your Hotmail,  Live or any other Microsoft user name and password.

After successful login you will be asked to chose account that you would like to monitor. If you didn't create standard account to your child now its time to do it. It is recommended to create standard accounts for your kids and other users.You can find out more on how to create account and account differences in my previous post for User Account Settings.

To approve/block websites or get online activity go to familysafety.microsoft.com login with same account that used for family safety and you will see options where you can block websites for specific users, block file downloads, activity reports  time limits, app and game restrictions. Also there is Requests tab, if monitoring user wants to visit website, play game or open any apps request will be sent to you for approval or denial. 

Now you are ready to do some real parental control. Thank you for reading my blog posts. 

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Parental Controls

With Parental Controls you can restrict access to your computer in certain hours, prevent users from accessing some programs , games etc. This windows feature is very useful if you are looking on how to do some restrictions on your kids computer , prevent them from doing what is not appropriate for their age.
Best is to start by reading User Account Settings post and create new account for your kid.
Please read that post first and than proceed to the next step of creating Parental Controls.
When you are ready go to Start-Control Panel-User Account Family and Safety-Parental Controls.
Have your administrator account protected with strong password to prevent users to bypass and turn of parental settings and use the computer without restrictions.

• Set Specific time Limits to your children's computer use with different logon hours for every day. For example you can set your child computer use Monday to Friday limited to one hour because of school and  let them play more hours on Saturday and Sunday.Under Parental control click On, Enforce current settings - Time Limits and than choose hours as you want to block or allow.

• Prevent from running specific programs. In case you are using some programs that you want prevent other users, your child to access than click on Allow and Block specific programs , switch to "User Account can only use the programs I allow" and than choose programs from the list. Also there is an option where you can add the program to the list in case its not shown.

• Prevent your Children from playing specific games. You can Block All Games or Block Games by age rating, by content or you can block specific games. Go to Parental Controls - User Controls - Game Controls and decide whether User can play all games or have restrictions to some games.

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