How You Can Set Up Parental Controls On Your Home Network

By Author: Brook M. Perry
Total Articles: 84
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In the contemporary cyber world, where information is just a click away, there lie many online threats, scams, infections, and other things that might turn your pleasant online experience into a disastrous one. Well-trained professionals, and advanced online users are aware of such threats and have the tendency to first scan website’s security parameters however, beginners might get trapped into such online scams. Parental control is an ideal solution for such beginners and your kids to filter the web by blocking inadvertent access to inappropriate websites that might contain harmful codes. Web filtering is especially designed and is best used to restrict the unprotected, inappropriate, and adult websites from the reach of your young children thus, providing them a safe Internet experience.

In this article, you will read about the various ways in which you can set up parental controls on your home network:

1.Set parental controls on your router

Router configuration is counted amongst one of the easiest ways to set up parental controls. Your router functions as a connecting link through which traffic for ...
... your network flows and changing its settings will allow you to perform web filtering for all the networked devices. You can easily set parental controls on computers, Smartphones, tablets, and even gaming consoles with built-in browsers to restrict your kids from accessing unsafe data/websites.

Some routers are shipped with built-in parental controls and you can go to the router’s web-based configuration pages to set them on your network. But the ones that don’t include parental controls can be restricted by ‘OpenDNS’ to set up parental controls. You can change your router’s DNS server settings to use OpenDNS, which allows you to set up an account and configure web filtering. Allowing you to block different types of websites, the settings will redirect user to a ‘This site is blocked’ message, whenever a user tries to access it.

2.Set parental controls with third-party software

Applying third-party parental controls simply means installing software with advanced techniques and codes to prevent your device from severe infections and damages. Some of the advanced Internet security suites come with built-in parental controls that let you control and monitor the traffic of websites your kids can access. You can also use the dedicated parental control solutions like Net Nanny, Qustodio, Norton Family, DNS Angel, KuruPira WebFilter, and many others to block access of unnecessary websites. You can easily find numerous free web filtering solutions available online while searching for the one that may fit your requirement.

3.Set up parental controls on Windows 7

Windows 7 comes with built-in parental controls that enable you to control which user can log into the computer at what time and what programs it can access. You can easily use a separate user account on your computer for your kids and use Family Safety, a free program that allows you to set up web filtering, for essential protection. Made available as a part of Microsoft’s Windows Essentials package, the feature can be easily managed by accessing the Microsoft’s Family Safety website.

4.Set parental controls on Windows 8

Windows 8 has integrated parental controls, which is provided with Family Safety’s web filtering and some more new features. You can manage your settings and view reports from the same Family Safety website and make changes for the future accessible websites. Checkmark the ‘Is this a child’s account?’ box when setting up a new user account on Windows 8 to apply parental controls.

No parental control can assure 100% safety or restriction of websites as teenagers are adept at finding their ways around parental controls, if they want to. But the settings act as an excellent firewall protection between the Internet and the toddlers, who can’t differentiate between the safe and unsafe content. It is quite agreeable that no parental controls are perfect as they won’t block everything malicious and may occasionally block something good, which is informative and important.

About the Author: He is a Technology writer working with Qresolve as a Technical Support Engineer. Brook M. Perry has been offering online tech support to global customers for issues related to laptops, desktops, Mac and devices including iPods, tablets, iPhones. online computer support She caters to the segment of core technology and provides viable solutions to any issues related to technology and software. Her expertise and skills in handling key technology issues is immaculate and quick result bearing.