Kids computer profile...

[rjwaldren]

Does anyone use a tool for securing a child profile under XP/Vista? I need to do this for my 5 year old on a XP box.

I would like to make a restricted user account and have some content filtering, use of use features would be nice too. Another thing is locking her down to a private environment where she can't disrupt anything else on the PC. If it is a help app I would like it only to run while she is logged in.

I was hoping to find a premade theme pack with security extensions added, this seems like a common need, but I've not had much luck. Linux would be "easy" to do as there are tons of childrens/educational desktops out there. Unfortunately I can't have her on any of my Linux boxes.

[Mr__Bill]

I have been asked this questions many times. The reality is, blind luck, dumb chance and a clever mind will always find a way to circumvent it. I tell people that if the kid is ready for unsupervised computer time it's time for their own computer. Ghost it and when it's trashed just restore it. Kids will learn a lot more with the ability to do some wrong or software damage than when things are locked down. Remember too, at that age she doesn't need a whizzbang computer, your old one will do just fine.

In your router you can set up restrictions for internet access and loading a program like Net Nanny on her computer should take care of most things.

Things to remember, set the speed of the mouse to slow, make sure she is sitting right and viewing the monitor without a crick in her neck. Keep extra keyboards on hand they are inexpensive and should be considered a consumable with kids. And... if when things go wrong you show her how it's fixable and not a scolding offense you soon will have a confident and happy geek in training.

When my daughter was that age she got her own Apple IIC she was so proud of that thing she kept it as a keepsake clear through high school. It was just on a shelf but she would not get rid of it. She may have it in storage somewhere today.

Bill, on the Sunny Oregon Coast

[rjwaldren]

I found the kidzui plugin for firefox and will give that a try. She's been using Nick, Jr. for a while and gets around just fine. The main thing was that I wanted her isolated on the system. She just got her own digital camera and needs a place to store photos.

I setup a limited user account, removed everything from the desktop except for Firefox, My Docs and the photo app. Then install the kidzui plugin - It comes up as a restricted browser with a ton of kid friendly content. I tried the search engine and when I searched for Gerbils it came back with thing the the Kids World Almanac - Not one Richard Gere reference (I apaologize)

We are always right there when she is using it but it's so easy to stumble into things - I'll always remember years ago showing my mom that you could find anything on the Internet, she said "look for how to hook up a three-way switch" Not with her looking over my shoulder.

[pierhogunn]

if you have the horsepower laying around on another computer.

Set up a locked down, stripped down, local account on the kids computer and make it so that they have to Remote Desktop into a virtual pc client you build on your most powerful machine, then lock that one down, and make backup copies of it so that when your child toasts the machine, restoration is a simple 1.2.3...

as a matter of fact, that is how I am going to do my home network, but I am also going to make it so that there is no hard drive in the local machines, and that they boot off of the net, or off of a concealed flash drive

Ram is cheap

[richtw]

try smoothwall?

since you are ok with linux, if you have another PC around, you might want to give smoothwall a try.

I set it up as the firewall for my network, and then installed the Dansguardian add on. It filiters for content, and I also used it's blacklist capability to block sites.

for my wife and I, I put ident servers on our machines and we are exempted from the filtering.

It also logs all the web traffic, email downloaded and instant messaging.

[rjwaldren]

I have a heavily modified DD-WRT router so the firewall isn't an issue.

I was more or less looking for a ready made environment. It look like what I set up for right now will be fine for her. I have a 2.4G P4 set aside for her but don't have time or the place for it right now.

When I do set it up I'm thinking of an app that I've used for libraries. It was a W98 app, that you had to interrupt during the boot sequence to log on as admin to make any changes... During normal boots however it was comp[letely indestructible. You could make changes like backgrounds, settings, download files, etc and it would be fine for the session - but when you rebooted it was exactly as the admin had set it up. Everything was done in temp or shadow files. We even did an experiment once with fdisk C:. Every thing looked like it worked and the drive looked clean, hit the reset button and it booted right back to the default desktop just as was originally configured.

In the long run netbooting to a VM on the workhorse will be in place but I don't have the time right now.