Uh Oh! I've got a 12 year old and although he only uses the pc in the dining room, in view of others, I've been concerned to find that I ought to be using some sort of parental control software! :eek 

Our PC is password protected but I want to be sure that he doesn't see things he shouldn't.

Does anyone have any experience of this type of software or could anyone recommend anything?

which windows are you running on? as XP has its own parental blocker thingy. I had to activate mine as my 2 teens decided one day they were gonna do some "adult" reasearch. You can adjust the settings aswell. seems to work rather well, as i cannot find anything innocous (?) in the history files. :)

:) Think it's the nocuous you need to worry about ;)

:D
well my blocker must be working then as i didnt find any of that either LOL ;) :D

Yes I use Windows XP.  Can you point me in the right direction?

Thanks for being helpful.

I use aol - the parental control blocker is brilliant :D  You can also put a tracker on where they're searching on the net :D

One thing you may need to do as well is phone BT (or whichever phone provider you have) and put a ban on all PREMIUM numbers these can get on your comuter easily when teens are trawling and sneaky diallers get downloaded without them or you knowing - can be VERY expensive if it happens but very easy to prevent ;) ;)

Hope this helps

Been there and done that with eldest Dill!  It was a friend of his who tried that one with a certain oriental number!  Several hundred pounds later his mum discovered!  It's now the turn of my youngest to be 'of a certain age'.

My eldest son wouldn't allow AOL anywhere near our computer so will investigate the XP facility a bit more.

I haven't got parental control, although I suppose I should but we do all have our own 'accounts' on our computers.  This means that we each have our own passwords to access our own accounts.  My OH and I are "Administrator Accounts" and the kids are "restricted accounts"  It's great because only the admin accounts can download new programmes.  I found that the shareware sites that I kept telling mine not to use were really messing up my computer.  Not anymore! :D  As administrator I can also access the other accounts if I want to and check the history of the others' browsing activities. 

The guy who fixed my computer the last time set up the accounts so not sure how you set up yourself but it can't be difficult.  Someone on here must know.  To change user accounts etc I go through 'Control' then into 'User Accounts'

Be brave and have a look at the history to see what web sites they've been looking at when you aren't around! 

I am not one of those mums who thinks mine will never do things, primarily because I have had the teenager from hell and have the rapidly greying hair and frown to prove it.  Daughter hardly used computer (she's in Australia at moment) last few months all things Australian or ebay.  All son's sites look football connected which figures for him, other stuff looks like connected to his GCSE coursework.  MSN history - naughty words cropping up but again mostly football connected but suppose that's to be expected from teens.  I'm not complacent though, I know this could all change overnight.

Hi jackyjat

you need to be in Internet options ( click on tools in bar at top of a web page) then click content tab, content advisor is at the top of that page click enable and follow the instructions, you can block accesss to sites that contain language pictures etc... you adjust the settings to suit. you will have to provide a password,( not one that the kids could guess) this will be needed  you want to access those restricted sites,
If you have more than one account ie you are admin and kids are a non admin a/c then you can just activate on the kids a/c and not on your own one.

hope you can follow that, any problems give us a shout :)

Simple!  All sorted!  Thanks for that Jane!

It is quite easy to delete the history, especially for computer boffin kids these days, i would agree parental blocks are very useful.

your welcome.... ;) :)

jackyjat,

I'm curious (or maybe a bit dense ;) :) ) why won't your son allow aol on your computer? 

It totally takes over your whole pc, installing it's own email client, internet browser etc - if that's what you want then no problem, but for some it is a totally unacceptable package to use :)

>>It totally takes over your whole pc

LOL sounds just like a teenager ;) :D

Oh yes, tell me about it - there's nothing like a teenager to completely take over the pc, computer room, network, desk, stationery.......... :D

Its also damn near impossible to completely uninstall it with out a full reformat :( , nasty nasty thing, it isn't known as AOHell for nothing lol