Viewing 11 posts - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
  • PSA: Google supervised user Beta
  • Stoner
    Free Member

    This may be of limited interest in here…but

    I’ve recently set up Stoner Jr Sr (Aged 8 ) with a gmail account, not specifically for email, but so as to give him his own Google account to which I can share cloud printers and he can write his own stories and save them in Google Docs etc.

    While I was setting it up, I noticed that when you add a new User to an instance of Chrome (it allows multiple signed in users on the same PC – say me & the Mrs and my work account can all have instances of chrome running with our own sign-ins) you can now set up what’s called a “Supervised user”.

    It’s only in beta but it allows you to set up either whitelist or blacklist sites and keeps a log of sites visited available for the supervisor to view. I tried going for whitelist but it would take ages to populate (the supervised user can send access request notifications to the supervisor though) so Ive just gone with blacklisting for now and will add blocked sites I see as being inappropriate if they turn up in the history list. The only site I have blocked at the moment is YouTube and safe search is locked on.

    I’ve also set the default search engine and homepage to a kid-safe search engine http://www.kidrex.org/ (which coincidentally doesn’t return YouTube links to search answers)

    Jr has an old laptop with a Ubuntu build on it and Chrome. Its on his desk where I can see him using it as I pass so while I’m going with the “watch your kids and don’t trust tech/software/government to stop them doing something stupid” approach the Google Supervised User service does provide some useful additional tools, within my control.

    monkeychild
    Free Member

    Cool! Added this thread to favourites. Cheers

    somouk
    Free Member

    Good idea and a blacklist with monitoring is the best way forward.

    Due to the way websites work with content delivery networks maintaining a white list is a pain.

    You might want to check its behavior with SSL sites though as that might be an easy way for him to bypass it.

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    miketually
    Free Member

    I wonder if this works on Chromebooks?

    nemesis
    Free Member

    I’d heard that this is the next thing (or one of them) for Google – kid friendly internet. Sounds great, thanks for the PSA. Same question on chromebooks – will have to see if it works tonight.

    matt_outandabout
    Full Member

    Hmm, will look tonight.

    geoffj
    Full Member

    Perfect! Miss J is getting a Hudl2 off Santa and this will help. Master J is also getting an android device but I suspect Dad’s interference in his browsing history is likely to be more contentious 😈

    cookeaa
    Full Member

    Good PSA OP… Cheers, I shall be setting up accounts for both my kids now with so I know I can manage them already when the time comes, this will be handy soon actually as our eldest is now five and increasingly keen on using tablets/laptops for school research and things, she already loves using youtube…

    Might be nice if they could (at some future point) add template white/blacklists for when you start setting up a new supervised account…

    What happens if they go into ‘incognito mode’ in chrome?

    What sort of controls does it give over email? can you limit/control contacts, ramp up the spam/phishing filters to Max to avoid curious little minds clicking on unsolicited malware links etc could you set it up so all in/out going email is BCC’d to daddy?

    Ultimate parental control is what I really want, which I can maybe repeal slowly over time, perhaps starting some time around her 40th birthday?

    I shall have a good old squiz…

    Stoner
    Free Member

    I have just added Stoner Jr as a supervised user on my chromebook.

    https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/3463947?hl=en-GB

    all works fine. When you create a new user on the chromebook it now gives you the option to create a supervised user, and you can even import a supervised user if you have created one on another instance of chrome on another computer. It will import the restrictions you have created.

    BUT it does not import any sign on credentials you may have allocated that user (i.e. google account sign in to docs or bookmarks etc). Im guessing this is a function that will come in later versions. In chromebook supervised user I cant see a way to sign in to a specific account whilst being a supervised user, but I shall do some more playing.

    For now restrictions extend only to site permissions and a history that the supervisor can read remotely.

    This is a chrome browser function at the moment, not a google-wide service.

    EDIT: Incognito mode is disabled for supervised users. I have also managed to sign on with Jrs account details (not to chrome itself, but to google sites).

    geoff – no sign of Supervised User coming to Android yet.

    geoffj
    Full Member

    geoff – no sign of Supervised User coming to Android yet.

    🙁 I was thinking of Chrome in the most general sense. Oh well, back to the big stick approach 😀

    nemesis
    Free Member

    Supervised user can be replicated in Android with Zoodles or similar (for younger kids at least).

Viewing 11 posts - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)

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