Keeping Kids Safe on OS X
Parents often come into our retail stores with questions about their children and internet safety. We always do our best to provide the most current and relevant information on this topic, but with technology advancing so quickly, it’s often a tough task.
A few weeks ago, I attended a local discussion on this topic and—as with so much in the world of computers—the suggestions and options seemed to vary significantly. Often times, parents are looking for a device or software that controls what their child can and cannot see online. Schools and other public locations often have a filter system in place which goes between the incoming internet connection and the computers. This filter blocks unwanted access to thousands of websites, preventing everything from inappropriate content, to simply stopping kids from spending school time on Facebook. This type of system is often kept up to date by the filter’s service provider and is easily updated when new sites and searches need to be blocked. While this type of service is highly effective, it tends to be impractical at home for a variety of reasons. The good news, however, is that your Mac is already largely equipped to handle this kind of filtering.
OS X has a number of parental controls that can be easily configured to keep your children safe online. Using these built-in controls, you can limit your child’s access in a number of ways. You can control what hours of the day or days of the week your child can use to the computer, limit who they can email or chat with—and vice versa—or only allow access to websites on an approved list. To enable these features, a parent must first have administrative access to their child’s account. From the administrator account, simply open System Preferences and select Parental Controls. From here, you can customize the available options to your content. However, it’s important to consider that no amount of safeguarding is going to protect your child from every possible website, game or application you and your family would prefer they not have access to.
As a parent, knowing where and how your child is using the internet is, in my opinion, the best defense in making sure your kids are safe on the computer. Luckily, OS X makes it a little easier to relax on this issue when you know your computer has an abundance of included parental controls to help!
Click here# to read more about parental controls.
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