A very lucky girl is getting a laptop for Christmas, so Windows 8 (or 8.1 if it makes any difference).

What’s my best bet for a) stopping her buggering it up with virus’ and so on, and b) keeping an eye on what she’s up to on the Internet, Facebook etc.

With BT we have McAfee Family Protection available, Windows seems to have something similar. Will either of these do the job?

From the keeping an eye point of view, we have spoken to her about some of the issues, and have had no cause so far not to trust her. To that end my preference at the moment is to have some sort of daily/weekly report of what websites she is visiting. If I set the laptop up myself as administrator and then a user account for her can I do this? Or do I need 3rd party software like the McAfee thing from BT? When she gets Facebook she’s been told that we have to have access to her account. Anything else to consider?

From the AV point of view, does Windows alone do a good enough job these days?

Cheers

TGA

I read this article not long ago and found it really shocking. I don’t have kids but as my friends are getting their kids tablets and smart phones etc we have talked about their security online. It’s pretty mad what children have to be aware of these days but I think awareness is the key.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25000800

Yes, admin account will also reduce likelihood of installing stuff that shouldn’t be there.
Look at OpenDNS. There are ways around it, but it will give you a log of what web sites have been visited. also look at Routers. Newer ones have more admin features that may help.

seavers – I remember that one. I have spoken to her about such things, including anonymised real incidents that I’ve seen at work.

rich mars – so this OpenDNS works on the router, so would do the same for her iPod, smartphone etc. ?

OpenDNS can work at the router level, or device. Obviously, if on the router everything going thro’ it will be affected, pc, iphone, tablet etc, which is good if you need to cover lots of devices. But, I don’t think it’s 100%. It gives you a log, so this should be used to monitor which sites are being visited.

Won’t work for the smartphone if she is on a data package. Most teenagers seem to know how to get by it unless you lock it down quite tightly. Probably still worth doing though
edit:just asked my daughter and she had no idea how to do it but i don’t block much

I don’t think (famous last words!) mine would either. Sounds like the OpenDNS and W8’s Family stuff should strike a balance.

What about anti virus?

Windows 8 comes with Microsoft security essentials built in. For me the combination of Google chrome as browser, openDNS and MSE has been good so far. What like about MSE is that it seems to just work without being intrusive

Check out qustodio. My daughter has it on her phone and her laptop!

Windows 8 comes with Microsoft security essentials built in.

Windows Defender, but yes, same difference.

Check out qustodio. My daughter has it on her phone and her laptop!

Anything that relies on client-side configuration is doomed to failure. Even if your kid isn’t all that tech-savvy, how long do you reckon it’ll take the class’s resident David Lightman to bypass?

I can about imagine the hilarity if my parents had given teenage me a laptop they thought they’d locked down. I’d have had a public partition full of puppies and kittens for spot check purposes, and a second Truecrypt-hidden partition which was the one I actually used.

The only way you’re going to keep teenage kids “safe on the Internet” is to educate them into being safe on the Internet.