Windows Vista Parental Controls help ensure family safety on the Internet

Here are four steps you can follow to help protect your family online:

The American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) helped Microsoft develop age-based guidance for Internet use that's included in Windows Vista. Windows Vista includes family safety technology that can help parents choose the online content and experiences that are appropriate for their families. (If your computer runs Windows XP, consider using Windows Live OneCare Family Safety.)

If you're a parent, you can use the Windows Vista Parental Controls to manage the following:

You can also get reports about your children's online activity.

Turn on Parental Controls in Windows Vista

To help ensure family safety with Windows Vista, first you turn on the Parental Controls feature for your child's account. Then you adjust Web restrictions, time limits, game ratings, and program limits for the account.

You can only apply Parental Controls to standard user accounts, so first make sure that each child has a standard user account.

To set up Parental Controls for your child, you'll need to log on to your computer with an administrator account. (You cannot apply Parental Controls to an administrator account.)

To set up standard user accounts

Turn on Parental Controls

1.	Click Start, then Control Panel, and then, under User Accounts, click Set up Parental Controls. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
2.	Click the account for which you want to set Parental Controls.
3.	Click On, enforce current settings, and then click OK.

Now that Parental Controls are on for your child's account, you can set activity reporting, Web filtering, time limits, and gaming and program restrictions.

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Set up Web restrictions

To control which Web sites your children can access and which programs they can download, under Windows Settings, click Windows Vista Web Filter.

With Web restrictions, you can do the following:

You can choose which level of restriction to apply for each family member.

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Set time limits

To set the times when your child can use the computer, under Windows Settings, click Time limits.

Use the grid to set blocks of time when your child can use the computer.

Allowed hours are white and blocked hours are blue. Your child cannot log on during blocked times, and if a child is logged on when time limits expire, he or she will be logged off.

For more information about time limits and how to set them up, see What are time limits in Windows Vista Parental Controls?

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Control what games your child can play

Here, you can allow or block games based on rating, or you can choose to allow or block specific games.

To block games by official game ratings or content

1.	Under Windows Settings, click Games.
2.	Click Set game ratings. Choose which game rating system you want to use and then set the rating. Parental Controls will allow games at that level and lower. With Game Restrictions you can also block certain types of content, such as blood and gore or drug references.

To block specific games

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Set up activity reports

If you want a report on what sites your kids visit, what games and programs they play and download, and when they are online, make sure to select On under Activity Reporting. Click View activity reports to see the report for the child’s account.

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