You are here: Home / Webspace

Windows 7 Parental Controls does not filter the web

June 25, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

By itself anyway.

One of the best things Vista had, was the ability to control the access your children have to the computer and internet.

You can control what programs can be ran: You can set which installed programs can be ran under your child’s account.

You can set limits on games:  You can separately control what games your kids can play. By rating or just in general.

You can control when your kids can use the computer: Using Time Limits, Windows allows you to set what hours of the day your child(ren) can use the computer.

You could also use the built in web filtering to control what websites your child can see. Each of these features was also included in Windows 7 EXCEPT the built in content filter.

Now you must install a separate piece of software.

Booooooo-Hiss-Hiss

It is however, better this way. It is also much more robust and will actually SAVE you time.

Web filtering is now accomplished with a component from the Windows Live package. The service hooks into parental controls in Windows 7 enabling you to monitor what your kids do online. Management of the new web filter is done online with Windows Live. You can set various levels of content filtering or switch to a pre-determined list of child-friendly sites which can also include sites you’ve white listed. You can also prevent file downloads. Other features of this service include activity reporting, contact management (controlling who your kids can communicate with online), and the ability to manage requests by your kids to access restricted content.

All of which is great. If you have multiple kids and multiple computers, the one stop shop to configure access to the internet will save you tons of time. And tons of trips up and down the steps.

More info about Windows Family Safety

Filed Under: Software, Webspace Tagged With: Content filter, Kids, Parential Controls, Windows 7

How to combat Scareware

September 9, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Scareware, what an unusual term. Most of us have seen it, a little pop-up or message that says something like “Warning your infected” or ” Click here to scan for free” If you need examples take a look here

http://www.icustom-pc.com/infections

We now call it scareware because that’s what it tries to do. Scare you into doing something. Some of the programs are worse than others. Most are tying to get you to buy their software. Some just want to infect your pc so it can send out tons of spam using your pc as the server. The worse would be them getting your credit card number and draining your account.

Most of these scare tactics are embedded into hacked websites. Quite a few are hidden in banner ads spread across the internet. The attack comes from so many directions, its hard to say where you will see it next.

The best thing to do if it happens to you is close out of the browser all together. Make sure you do not click on anything, not YES or NO or Cancel.

Yes is YES,  no is YES, and Cancel is YES. Confused yet? If you find these pop-ups and scare warning are constantly happening, its time to have your pc cleaned for viruses & whatnots. It usually means that the virus has moved from the web to your pc, and now it can really annoy you.

If it happens when your not connected to the internet, then you are definitely infected already.

Be safe online!

Filed Under: Webspace Tagged With: Scareware, Spyware, Viruses

Browsing the net with smartphones.

May 17, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

As i recently upgraded to a smart phone, the first thing i did was look up a store to see what their hours were. Should have been a pretty simple thing, go to www (their company name) and find out when they close so I don’t drive across town for nothing. I wait, and wait, and wait until the page times out. I refresh, wait and wait again. It would seem that their website would not work with my smart phone. Then I decide to take a look at other websites I frequent attempting to find out if its just them or everyone.

To my surprise, most companies did not have smart phone optimized sites or mobile sites as it’s called in the industry. I went to more than 2 dozen website looking for addresses, phone numbers, simple stuff. Only 2 out of 10 times was I able to actually find what i was looking for on their websites faster than it would have been for me to just call.

Smart phones, have a much lower download speed, and many don’t have flash, java, etc enabled.

After seeing this, I immediately went to our own company website and ours wasn’t any better. I could not find our address, phone number or store hours. Our java based store locator didn’t work at all, and 45% of the screen was too big for my phone. Seems the only way to get to the information was through  java scripts and my stock phone didn’t run java.

For anyone who has a website, this is a wake up call. Ask your designer about the impending takeover of smart phones. More and more people will be browsing the internet with them and if your website isn’t ready, then you may miss out on potential customers in their car, on their way, but can’t find you. They may call you, or they may just go to the next website where they can actually find the into they want, from their phone.

Filed Under: Webspace