best protection software

southdave

Hi,

my sister has decided to allow her 13 year old son (my nephew) to have a computer in his bedroom for christmas (against my advice).

I am a very experienced techie and have said that if she insists that he has this PC i would put every level of protection on that i can get my hands on to protect him.

The PC will be running Vista or windows 7 and as well as the usual batch of anti-virus, anti-malware, locking down the admin account so my nephew only has a user level account, using parental controls to block !!!!!! etc, i want to put some extra protection software on that keeps track of everything that he does, web sites visited, people he has chatted to (and the content of the chats), software he has tried to download and install etc., prefarbly be remote manageable or be able to send me reports so i know everything is ok.

As i dont live close to my sister this software has to be self sufficient to protect my nephew until i can visit or remote in.

Can anyone suggest different software that they are familar with and the what is good about it.

thanks for your help.

Dave

isofa

You could do that, but there are legalities of spying, and I'm certain you'd fall foul of the law. You certainly would if he was an adult, and he's not even your son...

Much better to educate the 13 year old, a clever teenager will soon have all your protection broken, anyone with decent knowledge an reset the admin password, as I'm sure you'll know.

Trust and education are everything.

cmonthehoops

My 15yr daughter has a laptop in her room and about 100% of her friends have one two I'm sorry but isofa is correct 'trust and education'(no offense)but i wouldn't let my brother snoop about my daughter or my sons laptop no way.

southdave

Hi,
unfortunately i have already tried the education and explaining the consequences route but that has not stopped him trying to download illegal software, movies etc and then uploading them to youtube.

The monitoring would be authorised by his Mom.

My main concern is who he is talking to and trying to protect him from they types of people on the net who prey on teenagers. Unfortunately he is not very street wise and quite readily visits web sites, software etc that his friends use and what usually means i have to spend hours cleaning all the malware and virus remains off there current laptop.

aliEnRIK

Im not sure if this is what your after but this is the best free software I know of to try to control peoples computer habits ~
http://www1.k9webprotection.com/aboutk9/product-features.php

[Deleted User]

If I was a youngster wanting to bypass any restrictions in place I'd just use a USB stick with Linux on it and do what I wanted to until my heart was content.

You might want to consider ways of avoiding that scenario also.

southdave

anewhope wrote: »

If I was a youngster wanting to bypass any restrictions in place I'd just use a USB stick with Linux on it and do what I wanted to until my heart was content.

You might want to consider ways of avoiding that scenario also.

BIOS and boot lock down are already on my list.

southdave

aliEnRIK wrote: »

Im not sure if this is what your after but this is the best free software I know of to try to control peoples computer habits ~

that looks good for the web side of things, just need something to cope with the messaging side.

macman

southdave wrote: »

Hi,
unfortunately i have already tried the education and explaining the consequences route but that has not stopped him trying to download illegal software, movies etc and then uploading them to youtube.

The monitoring would be authorised by his Mom.

My main concern is who he is talking to and trying to protect him from they types of people on the net who prey on teenagers. Unfortunately he is not very street wise and quite readily visits web sites, software etc that his friends use and what usually means i have to spend hours cleaning all the malware and virus remains off there current laptop.

Knowing all that, why is your sister encouraging him by letting him have his own PC in a private room? Surely better to give him open access but in an area where she can see what he is doing? Why is she devolving all the responsibility onto you?

isofa

And what happens when he's out of the house and at school / after school with his mates? Mobile phones? No one can control their children 24/7 this is why education is the best policy.

And what about the legality of what you are trying to do? It could end up with you in court.

southdave

macman wrote: »

Knowing all that, why is your sister encouraging him by letting him have his own PC in a private room? Surely better to give him open access but in an area where she can see what he is doing? Why is she devolving all the responsibility onto you?

She isnt encouraging him (i hope). He wants to capture HiDef videos of him playing games on his XBox (to upload to youtube - which started a separate conversation about copyright) and the laptop he has is not powerful enough to do it, so he (my nephew) said he wanted a PC in his bedroom to enable him todo this. This lead to the question asked of me "what is the best pc for the money" which is where the arguments started.

As a school nurse my sister has to deal with children every day that have been abused and assaulted because of there online activity in posting pics, phone details, home address etc on message boards and other such sites to people who they think are other teenagers but are the type of scum that prey on children so i was hoping she would understand and not allow my nephew to have one. But if she does let him (which i suspect will happen) i want to ensure i can protect him as much as possible because i do not want to be hearing about him being abused or killed because of something he arranged on this new PC.

Sorry that this post became so dramatic, but kids every day are being abused by predators that use the net and we only get to hear about a small percentage when it hits the headlines.

Dave