Many children have ‘Hotmail’, or ‘Windows Live’ Email addresses. With Windows Live Mail you can now manage your child’s account and restrict their communication and what personal information they share. This can also be paired with MSN Live Messenger.

If your computer has Windows XP or Internet Explorer 5 or later then you can set certain controls within Internet Explorer. Go to Tools > Internet Options, and then choose privacy and security options to limit content viewed. To stay even safer you can download a third party program to set more limits on your child’s usage.

With Windows new operating systems, Windows Vista or Windows 7, there are excellent parental controls inbuilt. If you are set as administrator, and have your child or children as users, you can then control every aspect of their account. You can set what time they are allowed on the computer, what type of content they can view on the internet, block individual web sites, block and allow what programs and games they can play on and install, and best of all you get an activity report of exactly what they have been up too. Everything from Log On times, what programs, files or web sites they have been accessing and even records their emails and messaging communication. Find out more.