I recently switched from good ol’ idiot-level AOL to a cable modem. We like it a lot (the phone system is tricky at our new location and we were having major connection problems), but we are having a problem. I’m sure there’s a way to solve it, but my hands-on, non-AOL-type internet experience is slight, so I’m asking for suggestions.
The problem: we have 2 kids, ages 13 and 14. With this cable modem system, the internet is always ‘on’ – we click right to Internet Explorer or Netscape and there we are. No one needs to sign in and everything one of us looks at is available on the address bar for ALL of us to look at. My husband felt this was unacceptable – he doesn’t spend a lot of time browsing porn, but he does occasionally pop into Buttweiser.com and doesn’t want that fact right out on the address bar for our daughter to see. So, I spent hours yesterday trying to set us up separate accounts like we had on AOL. No dice – even when we signed on separately the address bar reflected everything anyone had looked at. So, I finally set the kids up in Netscape and my husband and I in Internet Explorer, and told the kids to stay the hell out of IE. This solved the problem as far as I was concerned – when I tell the kids not to do something, I expect them not to do it. My husband, however, is not so trusting, and he points out that they can still go to IE any old time they want and see whatever perverted stuff he’s been looking at :rolleyes:
So, my question (finally!): can I download or buy something to lock Internet Explorer? I found a lot of information on internet filters, but that’s not what I need. I need a way to lock IE so that only my husband and I can access it while leaving Netscape open and available to the kids. Does such a thing exist?
In the index part of the Help system, look at “Parental control”. I don’t think you can set up different sessions of IE for different users but you can set the Content Advisor to only allow non-objectional material through and your husband can change the filter, requiring a password, when he wants to go places children do not belong.
Hello Jess. If it’s just occasionally that you don’t want the address bar to include sites you’ve visited, you and your husband could try and get in the habit of clearing the history and temporary files from your machine. In IE, go to Tools -> Internet Options, and there should be a section for Temporary Internet Files, which has a Delete Files button, and one for History that has a Clear History button.
I know this doesn’t answer your actual question (about locking IE), but hopefully it helps.
What operating system Jess?
Did you try just setting a user password for the computer instead? But then I really can’t say much if I don’t know the operating system or version of AOL or verion of IE.
If you use the TweakUI tool on the Win98 or Win95 CD, you can set a ‘paranoid’ parameters that will clean your history and caches after every session. That is assuming you are using windoze, and realizing that means you can’t check on what the kids have n\been up to. And content advisor for IE works only if the web page posts a content rating, so it is not foolproof.
Geez, let your kids see the porn. Would you like them to find out about the opposite sex from willing members of such, or just look at dirty pictures? :D:D
My mom once chided me for “reading” Penthouse Magazine when I was 15. She said that Playboy was OK (I guess because its photos were more tasteful). I told her to tell Dad, because I was getting the mags from under his bed. :D:D
Assuming you’re using Windows 95 or 98, you can set up a login for different users. If you do this, your bookmarks will be user-specific, so I assume that the history would as well. This would also let each user set up color schemes, placement of desktop shortcuts, etc., to his liking without annoying anyone else.
In Win95 (it’s probably the same in 98), you can set up multiple users by going to Control Panel, Passwords, and then click the User Profiles tab.
My guess is that you’re not using Windows NT (or 2000), but you set up users in these with the User Manager.
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