Parental Control
The Web can be a scarey place, especially for kids. As a repsonsible parent, you want to do all you can to protect them from the unsavory sites. One of the first things that you can do is to activate Parental Controls in Safari.
The first step is to create a separate account for your child (or children). Next, turn on parental controls by choosing System Preferences, clicking on the Accounts icon, and selecting your kid’s account. In account preferences click on the Parental Controls tab and click on the checkbox next to Safari.
Now log out and log back in as your child. Open Safari, go to the webistes that you deem appropriate and bookmark them by clicking on the plus sign button in the toolbar (you’ll be asked for your Administrator password).
When finished, log out and log back in as you. Now the only sites your child will be able to visit are the ones you bookmarked. All other sites will be locked.
March 5th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
When children get older, their personal growth and their school assignments (homework, research papers, etc.) require that they be able to “surf the web,” and simply listing allowed sites becomes too restrictive.
At this point I want to be able list explicit sites that I don’t want them to access, plus list sites by content (i.e., pornograhy) or function (online chating with strangers).
Finally, I’d like to explicitly designate which system preferences my children have access to. For instance, when I choose to restrict access to sensitive system prefferences, the “security” preferrences are still available to my children. They use the security preferrence to reset the “wake from sleep requires a password” control so that at bedtime they put the mac to sleep, and then sneak downstairs after everyone has gone to bed and wake the mac directly into their user.