Help with setting up child safety/keylogger

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A friend of mine recently gave my youngest brother (he’s 10) an old laptop (2006 ish but built like a late 90’s PC) but my brothers been getting himself into trouble with it. I don’t want to use simple restrictions like giving him a restricted user account (some of the games he plays won’t work on a restricted account and he needs to be able to update without me) but I do want to place limits on him. As this already sounds like I’m rambling I’ll just make a list:

I need a keylogger that’s easy enough to use, compatible with XP and stores data locally to be read by another account (our network isn’t ready for a network solution). The keylogger should be something that Avira won’t try to hack. It should also preallocate a certain amount of space and delete old logs when they reach the limit. His internal drive is only 80GB and more than half of that is probably our collective music (5 people in a house and we all have our own taste in music and we all like some stuff the others like so I keep Music synchronized across the computers in my house).

I need a way to restrict what sites he can go on without limiting his user account in and of itself. Preferably a program that works at a lower level than the browser so he can’t just use a different browser (I know he could just use a different computer but that’s another animal altogether).

At current his computer only has his account on it but I plan to create another account for me to administrate on (and of course check the results of the keylogger). I also plan to create a guest account (though not going through Windows built in guest account system, I’ll use my own settings with a password that I’ll tell certain people).

(Below is a form of rant to deal with a particular type of response):
Before someone says to just take it away from him remember that this is the 21st century and he’s in school where they expect him to use a computer to create office documents and print them off as well as go online and do research. Since we don’t have home internet yet (and I’m really hoping it doesn’t keep getting pushed back as it has been) the laptop allows him to go to the library and get his work done on the wireless (and save data to his machine without needing to rely on gdocs for everything). I realize it’s possible to live without a laptop but I did just that for many years and I know that at least where I’m living it’s practically impossible.

Thanks in advanced.

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See Parental controls in XP as starting point. If you don’t like that check out some of the software at Cnet downloads – parental control.

Joe

--Joe

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OpenDNS is a good start to control where he can go (http://www.opendns.com/start/). I don’t have any recommendations on a keylogger. When you do get Internet access at home, I do recommend keeping the computer in a location that is always visible. In other words, not behind a closed door. I’m recommending that from personal experience. I wish you the best on this!

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@JoeP517:
The site your sent me to has a bad reputation on WOT (mywot.com) but only a few people have rated it and the comments are good. It looks like good info so I’ll go ahead and check try it out.

@Doc Brown:
I’ve heard of OpenDNS and it looks like it could work pretty well. I’ll have to check more into it.

For the Keylogger I’m going to read through: http://windowssecrets.com/2008/10/09/03-Find-out-whos-doing-what-on-your-computer
I’ve also sent a message to him (Scott Dunn) in the hope he’ll give his input on this.

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I just downloaded K9 I’ll probably set it up sometime this next week (possibly Wednesday just because I’ll need internet access). Still looking for a keylogger (or something similar) so I can watch him.

Something I didn’t mention before is that due to my current family situation it’s very difficult to watch his every move. Our desktop computer is in the family room so we can monitor that when we’re home but my brother will go to the library and friends houses. Chances are he’ll use his laptop so I can watch him with the logger. Of course he can go on other computers but if he does and we get reports he’ll find his rights severely restricted for a while. It’s just really hard to balance these things.

A little more about the keylogger. I need something to monitor him and work just locally. I’ll use other methods for control. He’s just a basic user overall (he asked me how to get a word document set as his background…) so I’m not to worried about hiding it from him (in fact I’ll make sure he knows, might steer him right).

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A friend of mine recently gave my youngest brother (he’s 10) an old laptop (2006 ish but built like a late 90’s PC) but my brothers been getting himself into trouble with it. I don’t want to use simple restrictions like giving him a restricted user account (some of the games he plays won’t work on a restricted account and he needs to be able to update without me) but I do want to place limits on him. As this already sounds like I’m rambling I’ll just make a list:

I need a keylogger that’s easy enough to use, compatible with XP and stores data locally to be read by another account (our network isn’t ready for a network solution). The keylogger should be something that Avira won’t try to hack. It should also preallocate a certain amount of space and delete old logs when they reach the limit. His internal drive is only 80GB and more than half of that is probably our collective music (5 people in a house and we all have our own taste in music and we all like some stuff the others like so I keep Music synchronized across the computers in my house).

I need a way to restrict what sites he can go on without limiting his user account in and of itself. Preferably a program that works at a lower level than the browser so he can’t just use a different browser (I know he could just use a different computer but that’s another animal altogether).

At current his computer only has his account on it but I plan to create another account for me to administrate on (and of course check the results of the keylogger). I also plan to create a guest account (though not going through Windows built in guest account system, I’ll use my own settings with a password that I’ll tell certain people).

(Below is a form of rant to deal with a particular type of response):
Before someone says to just take it away from him remember that this is the 21st century and he’s in school where they expect him to use a computer to create office documents and print them off as well as go online and do research. Since we don’t have home internet yet (and I’m really hoping it doesn’t keep getting pushed back as it has been) the laptop allows him to go to the library and get his work done on the wireless (and save data to his machine without needing to rely on gdocs for everything). I realize it’s possible to live without a laptop but I did just that for many years and I know that at least where I’m living it’s practically impossible.

Thanks in advanced.

Every new electonic or social media advance presents new challenges for parents. Actually one of my child is using facebook. I want to monitor her on facebook. What sould I do? I don’t know what date of birth she used. I don’t know much. I cannot talk to her. Theres a few people from her school that I’m really concerned about. Is it OK if I use a service to see who’s she is chatting with and what they are talking about? I am considering using these keylogger Mac|keylogger for Mac to spy on him.

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Every new electonic or social media advance presents new challenges for parents. Actually one of my child is using facebook. I want to monitor her on facebook. What sould I do? I don’t know what date of birth she used. I don’t know much. I cannot talk to her. Theres a few people from her school that I’m really concerned about. Is it OK if I use a service to see who’s she is chatting with and what they are talking about? I am considering using these keylogger Mac|keylogger for Mac to spy on him.

Kid’s are constantly learning strange new things from the internet and TV (I watched violent shows growing up not shows that horribly misconstrued the nature of sexual relations), Cyber-Bullying is a major problem, and schools still don’t do jack to fix the problems (if you work in a school I mean no offense I’ve just been horribly wronged by a system that believed known liars when they said I said I’d do something bad (like bring a gun to school or bomb the place) but wouldn’t believe me a kid who was constantly bullied for seeing life in a different often times more mature way when I pointed out the real bad guys (kids, adults, doesn’t matter to me if your a jerk/bully then I’ll call you out).

That being said I think it is important for us to watch kids and try to guide them to a better tomorrow instead of having them live in a worst environment than we did (I’m considered part of the current generation (I’m 22) and I’m seeing my siblings live in a worst school environment than I did). Even if they despise you now if you do the right thing and guide them then they’ll eventually (most likely) begin to realize why you did it. Especially once they have kids of their own (or if they’re like me an older sibling looking out for younger siblings). Just be careful not to cross the line, once they reach around 14 you need to back off a little bit. Still know where they are at all times (and preferably who they’re with) but perhaps lose the keyloggers around that time unless you have reason to suspect they are doing something wrong (though around 14 they’ll probably be able to figure out how to remove the keylogger, especially if they’re tech literate like myself).

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