Monitoring Sons computer use?

take an image of the machine using acronis or something similar so when he messes up the OS you can restore easily.

 

I completely dismiss this. You don't know the family situation so how can you even comment.

And its like saying, if you had a child outside playing you wouldn't set rules and boundaries. If my son goes out, i'll usually ask where he's going. When he comes in, i'll ask about what he's been up to. If i'm dubious or hes acting suspicious or he comes home angry or upset, i'll ask the people he's been with or there parents if they noticed anything etc....... So am i wrong to check up on my son in that instance???? Then why should it be any different on a computer??

I'm not gonna go over the same **** over and over again, but every parent will have different rules, different values and be in different circumstances. What will work for one child, may not work for another.

And Leaf, your Dad must have taught you a lot, maybe he taught you how to be a child psychologist or something, seeing as you know the full ins and outs of parenting, and what makes a good parent!!!

FFS!!

 

Dude, Seriously i don't even know why your waisting your time debating with some of the people's comments in this thread, You are right for having concerns for what your child does over the Internet. Take what ever precautions you deem to be fit to secure your kids. Me personally i have 3 kids in my house hold (2,6,8) and NONE are allowed to do a they want on the Internet. I control everything they see, play and read, and i will be doing so until they are at an age where i feel they can understand the dangers the Internet poses. This maybe at the age of 10,12,14 or even 16, totally depends or there level of understanding at the time. There are many adults who are being caught out but allsorts on the Internet so why chances do are kids have at a young age. Protect your children and if anyone is suggesting anything else then you really gotta question the advice they are giving you. paedophiles will tell you anything to gain access to your kids and "don't" forget that.!

Goodluck.!

P.S to all those who have debated with the OP, im in now way suggesting you are paedophiles. Just pointing out some facts to the OP.

 

cheers Fyew

 

This.

 

What ever you do, do NOT buy McAfee Family Protection. I've been working for a week to try to uninstall this off of my GF's fathers computer. It attaches itself to so many places.

 

McAfee Consumer Product Removal Tool 3.5.109.1

http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/McAfee-Consumer-Product-Removal-Tool/1216829463/1

 

I would suggest you have him use Firefox coupled with the Adblock plus plugin. Also get a couple of extra subscriptions from the adblock website.

These block most ads like those flashing banner ads.

I think it is great that you are concerned for his safety. There are so many bad things and bad people out there and children need all the help they can get to protect themselves.

 

UPDATE: AT first, i put on Parental controls (standard account), time restrictions, FF and Adbockplus.

I then took him off the standard account and gave him an admin account, and thought i'll let him make his own mistakes etc. Now i wish I hadn't, every crappy malware filled warez site/spam crappy virus seems to be flooding in on a daily basis, and the latest string of them I think may involve a clean install.

I chatted with him before hand to advise him not to go downloading stuff, unless he knew what it was and where it was from etc, but i guess my words fell on deaf ears.

Today he is going back to a restricted standard account. Trying to explain to a 10 year old that if you google anything followed by "download" will almost always take you to a malware filled site is very hard then trying to explain Malware/virus's/phishing etc its just all words to him.

i've shown him how to use the virus checkers and anti malwarebytes, but it seems to go through one ear and out of the other.

 

All good....

Hey, just curious as to which method you used in the end to restrict his account?

 

well, when he was on a standard account, i just used parental controls, did the job really, anything being downloaded needed me to come check and password it, and i also used the parental time restrictions.

when i put him on an admin account, all i had in place was time restrictions, found out how to place them using (net user "name" time: etc etc command) and set up a scheduled task also to shutdown at a certain time.

Had a brief look at policies but nothing in depth.

I've also now put his C: drive as a shared drive on my network and can oly be accessed by either me or my misses. that way, i can at least run scans and stuff from my pc

I have Radmin too, but couldn't get it to connect

 

VNC will do the job nicely for networked computers.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Remote-Utils/VNC-for-Windows.shtml

and / or

TightVNC

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Remote-Utils/TightVNC.shtml

More infomation:

Using Remote Desktop or a VNC Server

http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Access_Your_Computer_Remotely

 

I actually put VNC on today as it happens, great wee thing. I've left him on an admin and any clean-ups i have to do, i can just do from my pc, very handy

 

Doesn't OpenDNS and others offer some sort of filtering? I don't know if you could apply that to just his PC or all on your home netowrk.