How To Set Windows Parental Controls, Understand Browsing History & Private Browsing

Not only is it important for parents to be aware of their child’s Internet/computer activity, but they should also know how to actually go in and see the activity for themselves.  Because parental oversight and face-to-face communication only go so far, feel free to use this guide to:

- Set Parental Controls on a Windows Vista or Windows 7 based computer.

- View Browsing History on Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

- Understand the Private Browsing function on web browsers.

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How to Set Parental Controls on Windows Vista & Windows 7

1. Click on the Start Menu in the bottom left corner, and select the Control Panel option.

2. Click on “Set up parental controls for any user”.

3. Select the child account that you want to add parental controls to.  If your child doesn’t have their own user account, you’ll want to make them one so they have their own individual safety settings.

TIP: Your user account  (administrator) should always have a password on it if you and your child(ren) use the same computer.

4. Click the “On” button and start setting restrictions for your child’s account.

5. You can set Time Limits, Game access, and Allow/Block them from accessing specific programs on your computer.

NOTE: By setting Parental Controls in Windows, you are also automatically setting Parental Controls for Internet Explorer because IE is owned by Microsoft.

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How to view Browsing History in Internet Explorer or Firefox

Through browsing history you can see what websites have been visited for any given period of time. This is helpful in tracking any suspicious Internet activity.

To access browsing history:

1. Open up Internet Explorer or Firefox (whichever browser you want to see the history for).

2. On your keyboard, while holding down the Ctrl key, press H. This will bring up a sidebar that allows you to view the browsing history on this browser. Ctrl+H works for BOTH Firefox and IE.

3. You can also access this history sidebar by clicking on the gold star in the top left corner of Internet Explorer. For Firefox, you can also view your history by clicking on the History tab at the top of your browser.

Internet Explorer

Firefox

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I always encourage parents to dig 6-7 pages deep in  the sites their children regularly visit . At first glance, the name of a site can be deceiving; it may imply age-appropriateness, but in many cases I’ve found the content and advertising to be the exact opposite.

Click around and make sure you are comfortable with the content, the people, the culture and the advertising in the site. Then, be sure to talk to your children about any concerns you have about a site they are visiting.

Private Browsing

For starters, every browser has the Private Browsing function.  When it’s turned on, almost none of your Internet activity is tracked–temporary  Internet files are not stored, most cookies left untracked, essentially nothing is remembered.

Enabling this function is as easy as pressing Ctrl+Shift+P, or just going to the Tool menu and selecting it.

Unfortunately there doesn’t seem a simple solution in disabling this function, but that’s only more of a reason why parents need to be aware of  it.  If your child knows how to turn this on, you will not be able to track any of their Internet activity (unless you’re a computer whiz and know how to pull up those micro-cookie files!)

See the image below to see how it looks on each browser.

   Firefox

    Internet Explorer

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Category: Privacy, Safety, Tutorials