Lesson 1: Configuring and Troubleshooting Parental Controls and Content Advisor

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Lesson 1: Configuring and Troubleshooting Parental

Controls and Content Advisor

Parental Controls lets parents decide how their children use the computer. As an IT profes-

sional you might be asked to advise parents on how to configure Parental Controls or to con-

figure the facility for less computer-aware parents. You might need to answer more general

questions related to Internet safety and safety strategies. This is one of the most significant

areas of concern that purchasers of home computers have and they often need a lot of infor-

mation and reassurance. You might also need to configure restrictions for your own children.

MORE INFO Internet safety

For more information on Internet safety, you should seriously consider purchasing the book “Look

Both Ways: Help Protect Your Family on the Internet” by Linda Criddle and Nancy Muir (Microsoft

Press, 2006) and reading it carefully. This inexpensive paperback gives you a lot of information that

will help you in your chosen career. It might also help you protect your own children.

Schools can also use Parental Controls to limit the web content, games, and programs that

pupils can access on a per-child basis, although they are more likely to ask you to limit access

to certain types of web content on a per-machine basis, in which case you would configure

Content Advisor.

You can configure Parental Controls to set limits on children’s access to the web, the hours

that they can log on to the computer, and which games they can play and programs they can

run. When Parental Controls blocks access to a webpage or game, the computer displays a

notification. The child can click a link in the notification to request permission for access to

that webpage or program. A responsible adult who has an account with administrator creden-

tials can then allow access by entering a password. Thus a parent can control what his or her

children can access.

Content Advisor, a separate feature from Parental Controls in Windows Vista, works with web-

sites that supply content ratings for potentially unacceptable content. When a user attempts to

access such content or to access a site that has no ratings configured, IE7+ might block access

depending on the Content Advisor settings. In this case a responsible person can allow access

by supplying a supervisor password. You can also configure Content Advisor to permit access

to sites that have no content ratings configured. Unlike Parental Controls, Content Advisor

addresses only browsing the Internet and does not address broader parental concerns, such as

time logged on, access to certain applications, and so on. It also works on a per-machine basis,

not a per-user basis.