Enabling Family Computer Safety Protocols

In retrospect, we've been pretty lax around here with computer security.

The kids are allowed to use our computers, including my laptop which I keep in the living room, the desktop upstairs in my office and the laptop that my mother gave us and that we allow the kids to use on the kitchen table.

The kids are allowed to go to sites like SpellingCity.com and GamesGames.com. They are not supposed to stay on the computer for extended periods of time.

I admit though, after being cooped up in the house last week with all the snow, I turned a blind eye to the computer time.

This situation became clear last night after I sent my son to bed. On a whim, I went back to his room to check on him — and discovered him surfing a game site from the top bunk. With the computer that's supposed to be on the kitchen table. Somehow, he'd managed to sneak the computer out of the kitchen while I was sitting right there in the living room. Ack!

So, I've taken the computer away. And I've changed all the administrator passwords on all the computers in the house and setup individual accounts for both kids. I've turned the parental controls on in those accounts and set them so that the the kids can only login to their accounts from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. They'll have no computer time on Wednesday and can be logged in between noon and 8 p.m. on Saturday.

We have church on Sunday, so I disabled their accounts from logging in that day as well. There's more important things to do on Sunday.

I've also turned on all web filtering I could find and setup the game rating system.

Let the little stinkers try to sneak a late night surf fest now…