I’m not sure I made myself clear. I meant filtering not logging. Logging every search, keystroke, etc is absolutely not appropriate. I would object to any system that would allow filtering or logging based on sexual orientation, information on abuse, sex ed, and similar “sensitive” but not illegal or pornographic topics. I can think of no reason to have a child be permitted to access pornography or instructions on how to buy and use drugs.
So, summary: I think relatively permissive filters are acceptable. (Without some kind of filter I wouldn’t be permitted to provide a computer, which is something I think any teen should have access to.) I think detailed, keystroke type logging is unacceptable.
Where I’m trying to figure out a balance is with something like an activity report, listing time spent on various domain level sites - so that I can make a judgement if there is excessive time spent on Facebook or WoW forums, when studying should be the order of the day. I would honestly appreciate feedback on those topics.
Steve’s point is also well taken - there is also a question of trusting the vendor of the software, if such a tool is phoning home to the vendor before passing the information on to me. Luckily we are Mac users so won’t encounter MS, but I will reject a tool that sends a log to a third party. Apple offers a way to set up an account for a child with filtering, which I tested, but that filtering seems to need to be configured site-by-site (at least, I was able to open a number of porn sites with it turned on). As far as I can tell the logs stay on the machine itself (it has helpfully logged the fact that I visited a series of porn sites).
edit: I looked up the actual item on the paperwork: “What is your plan for the use of electronics in your home? What specific strategies will you use to protect your child from viewing explicit material, as well as protect them from internet predators?”
And you have to you know link it to your actual microsoft cloud account thing as well. So yeah. If you do like I did, paid attention, use a local account only, etc, It wouldn’t track/monitor/log/etc anything.
ETA heck this was in Vista/7, and available for XP. I did use to use it till the win8 update broke it for 7 and that was more for enforcing time limits on usage web filter was set to the almost but not quite everything and you could very easily whitelist things that got blocked if you thought it was okay for the kid to see it.
I can see your point for your personal situation; I work a similar field, and given the requirements of the job, filters are needed. Fuck this detailed report nonsense though, absolutely. Fuck it right in the eye.
That’s where I’m struggling - if logs are kept and reviewed, how detailed is too detailed? I definitely don’t want to see search histories or individual wiki pages accessed, but is there something in a log that might help me protect a kid?
My point was that you and I trust a librarian to not provide a child with a copy of Hustler, or a guidebook on how to buy and prepare heroin, not that we should be able to get a list of what was read.
Fuck, I dunno. I work with adults with learning difficulties, and I have people I work with who get really upset, and subsequently can display damaging and dangerous behaviours, by stuff that wouldn’t be affected by a nanny filter unless we set it up specifically for them (funerals, death in general, crime stories, basic news sites, you name it), and it’s totally unacceptable (quite rightly) to block what they want to look at anyway. I do a lot of unfucking of Windows boxes out of the goodness of my heart, I can tell you that…
The reports I got when I had that bit turned on were all high level. Main site and how often. Oh look the kids spends a lot of time on youtube followed closely by steam… ummm duh.
For a healthy NON OMG MY KID IS GAY parent who might be still a bit clueless or just damn busy with work may give them a hint of oh hey maybe I should make sure the kid knows that you don’t care and please bring your date of the same sex home we are not gonna freak out on you.
It does seem strange that these reports aren’t just staying local to the machine. I wonder how easy it is to intercept these weekly activity reports as they’re drip fed to the mothership and emailed back? Are they encrypting? Do they continue to gather the usage data when the option is turned off or does that just mean you don’t get a copy? How long are the reports stored and who do they share them with?
I’m the person being quoted in the main story. Here’s the deal: I’ve never had this enabled on my son’s laptop when it was running Windows 8. We upgraded to Windows 10 this weekend, and today, for the first time ever, I got this weirdly detailed report that I never asked for or enabled.
I have no idea how far back the feature goes and I don’t consider it relevant. However, it’s never been enabled on this one particular laptop before. Previous version bumps (like upgrading to 8.1) haven’t enabled it. The surprising part for me is that this Windows 10 upgrade coincides with the report being enabled and sent to me - unwanted, and certainly unrequested.
What FM would you suggest I read? My son had Windows 8.1 on his laptop (which was not generating these reports) and downloaded the Windows 10 installer. He ran the installer and at one point I helped him disable some of the other creepy settings. I never clicked anything like “monitor and report usage information to my parents” and I’m certain that he didn’t knowingly do so.
If you know of something we could have done different to not enable this report (again, which was not enabled before this) then please cure me of my ignorance and tell me what we did wrong.
Not under parental controls, but under my Microsoft account’s “Family” tab. He’s under 18 so he had to be added as a child.
He’s been logging into his laptop via his Live account literally for years so that he could message his Xbox friends and do other stuff like that. When we upgraded to 10, he logged into his laptop using that same Live account.
As another data point, I’m looking at his “Recent activity” page. It shows the same data I received in the email this morning, and only activity starting on Saturday when we upgraded the laptop’s OS. There is no listed activity from the same laptop before the upgrade.
