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The Internet's great freedom means that virtually any type of information imaginable can be found there, and this can be cause for concern for the parents of curious children eager to use this wonderful tool. Some may be concerned about their children enjoying the computer to the point where they neglect other types of play involving physical activity. Others may be concerned about their children stumbling upon websites that contain things that they may not yet be mentally and emotionally ready to see, read or hear. While an important part of parenting involves teaching children how to responsibly make use of and understand the information in their world (including online), some parents also opt to make use of parental controls to control what their child is exposed to in the meantime while they are still learning these important life lessons.

The Parental Controls present in Windows Vista enable a parent to control things such as the amount of time, or which particular times, that their child can access their account, the games they can play and programs they can run, which websites that they can and cannot visit, and whether or not to track the account's activity (4). Parental Controls can be found in the "User Accounts and Family Safety" section of the Control Panel, or by using the main search function found in the Start menu. In order to use the controls, the account you are logged in under must have Administrator privileges (1).

At the Welcome screen, you are given the option of either applying controls to an existing account or creating a new account. You can choose to create a new account by clicking the appropriate link and following the prompts. From the main welcome screen, you can also choose to select a games rating system to be used with the Games controls, and can also select Family Safety Options, where you choose how often to view activity reports if you choose to turn on this feature (1).

When you choose an account and click on it you will see a number of options of things to control, including turning "Parental Controls" and "Activity Reporting" on or off for that user. When parental controls are turned on, there are four control options to choose from: "Vista Web Content Filter", Games, "Time Limits", and "Allow and Block Specific Programs". Next, we will take a look at each of these options and their uses.

The "Web Filter" option allows you to choose which websites to block and allow, and if you like you can select to do this automatically

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