looking for software

[intense]

Looking for the best and hopefully free software program to monitor

computer while kids are on it. I am a single parent I do have to work and just unable to watch them on the computer 24 7. Any suggestions would be apreciated.

[karthic]

do you need any automatic shutdown(or poweroff) application to automatically shutdown the system at a preset time so that you can limit your children's playtime on pc????????????????

            if yes pls let me know

          or else if you just want to monitor the files opened by them??if yes  just go to IE->History->My Computer.but if your children delete those data in the path given above then no way

          or something else, pls be specific of what do you want to monitor!!!!!!!!!

[Roco]

Looking for the best and hopefully free software program to monitor

computer while kids are on it. I am a single parent I do have to work and just unable to watch them on the computer 24 7. Any suggestions would be apreciated.

Hi, intense,  wellcome to the forum, I am sure you will find it usefull,

Hi ,I just looked at your recent posts,( hoping you were from the UK, we are short staffed over here  )  did you start the small biz. tuning internet connection speeds ?, sorry if my posting seemed a bit neg.  but I tried that , at a different end of life's time scale, and got overwhelmed by reloading old puters,

     

what operating system are you running ? with Xp you can make separate password protected accounts , and run children safe browsing, for the kids, 

but I have no experience or need for that, or so I thought

I would be very interested in the posts , as I have grandchildren just starting out with their own  computers ,

regards  Roc  UK

[tommie gorman]

Have you tried safe ISP's like paxway?

http://www.paxway.com/

OR

http://www.paxway.com/signup.cfm

They advertise on their TV channel here in KC MO.

Never tried it as of yet.

They have dial-up, accelerated dial-up, or DSL.

Another site:

http://www.safesurf.com/

Some software, with free trial:

http://www.netnanny.com/

Many more filtering software:

http://www.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Proxying_and_Filtering/Content_Filtering/Software/Client/

Many Monitoring Software:

http://www.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Internet/Monitoring/

Too many to share, here is the main Google list.

http://www.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Child_Safety/

Some freeware:

http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/misctools/fwparents.html

Or another safety one:

http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Child_Safety/

Maybe your answers are there. 

[Guest philp]

Looking for the best and hopefully free software program to monitor

computer while kids are on it. I am a single parent I do have to work and just unable to watch them on the computer 24 7. Any suggestions would be apreciated.

tommie's suggestions are excellent as always, but I personally tend to shy away from the free stuff. I just havent' had good luck with any of it, but maybe your luck will b better than mine.

That said, I really like Trend Micro products and the PC-Cillin Internet Security is ideal for what you are looking for: http://www.productquest.net/trend-micro-pc-cillin-internet-security-2006-1-year-updates.html

You can categorically block certain types of websites (adult, IM, porn, etc.) and/or URL's. And that is a heck of a price, IMHO.

No affiliation, YMMV.

[intense]

Hello all. She is running xp home. Yea kinda looking like the free key loggers are pretty much garbage. Even tried bfk. From sourgforge. She does have xp passworded and only she can get xp to boot up. I did that for her. The way I understand what she is wanting to do is she wants to protect her kids and yet at the same time know what they are up to. Her oldest is a 12 year old boy and the hormones are for sure kicking in. Her fear is limit him to much and he will just find another computer. After some thought I am thinking I will just go buy her something along those lines. I think she also plans on using it to kinda teach him the lesson, Mom knows what your up to. He has no idea on key loggers and such. Much appreciate the ideas. Any more would be super cool.

[cholla]

intense & others;I don't know how to do this & it would probably take some extra software to do it.I think installing a second internal hard drive that is password protected & saves all the data of anything done on the computer.While letting the main hard drive do the work like it always has.Then she could access the second hard drive to see what was going on since only she could access it.A spy hard drive more or less.Just don't let the children know about it.You might even be able to hide the fact it's even in the computer.The children don't even need to know how mom figured out where the surfed.

[tommie gorman]

One other idea intense, make sure the computer stays in plain site, where every one can see them when they are on-line. Definately not in the bedroom. My kids comp is in the kitchen. We just make room. Embarrassment is a powerful tool. How much would we be more careful if our kids could see every thing we do on it. Even just jokes like we do in here.

At least I do when my kids are in the room. 

[ispgeek]

Netnanny is what we recommend to our subscribers for parental monitoring.  This is not freeware and it will allow to do just about everything a parent could want including silent cc: of all IM's and emails sent and received by your child.  Will also allow to award your child a lump sum of computer time per week and when its used thats it...no access unless you allow it.  You can also define sites, times of access and a whole host of other things. You can try it free for 14 days I think....this is a very well respected software package and puts the control back into your hands without restricting your access as well.