Windows Live team blog archive

If you have a family and you worry about keeping them safer online, Windows Live Family Safety can help you do that. If you’re just getting started using Family Safety, or you’ve already been using it for awhile, there’s a terrific article on the Windows Help and How-to site called Staying safer online. In it, Gloria Boyer from the Windows team tells the story of how she set up Family Safety for her sister’s household.

When Gloria set up her sister’s computer she created separate Windows accounts for each family member.  Family Safety works better with separate user accounts (because parents can view reports about the sites each child visits). Plus, this means that each person can also:

• Customize their desktop: Little kids can set a picture of their favorite cartoon character as their desktop background; the older kids can use a picture of their favorite band.
• Set up their own Start menu and taskbar.
• Set their own Internet favorites. Parents’ money management websites won’t appear on the kids’ Favorites lists, and CartoonNetwork.com won’t be on the parents’ lists.

If your family’s used to using just one account, it might sound like a big deal to ask everyone to use separate accounts and passwords.  But there are a few ways to make switching between accounts easier for your family:

• When you leave the computer, lock it using this quick keyboard shortcut: Hold down the Windows key and press the L key.
• Use Fast User Switching so you can switch right to a different account without logging off, which would close down your work.
• Or log off by clicking the Windows Start button, pointing to the arrow next to the Lock icon, and then clicking Log Off.

The next person who wants to use the computer is then free to log on with their own user name and password, and all of their desktop settings and favorites will be just where they left them.

How does all this locking and switching work with Family Safety? Great!  When you switch to a different Windows account, you are still signed in to the Family Safety Filter, no more signing in and out. That’s one less thing to do, and when you have a family to take care of, you have more than enough to do!

-Sylvia French
Windows Live Team

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