Windows Live Safety Settings
This via BetaNews; Windows Live Safety Settings will be coming out of beta by the summer of 2006; with “content filtering for the Web, contact list management tools for communication services, and online activity reports.” There’s also a veiled reference to that bastion of evil, MySpace:
“Activity reports list detailed information on what each family member is visiting, and are accessible from any Windows Live PC. Even further, contact list management would allow the parent to restrict access to a child’s Web log or social networking page, and specify who may contact the child via Windows Live communications services like Messenger and Mail.”
Kids are smart and kids can get around filters, but I appreciate the help. And I am puzzled by this statement:
“”The Internet should be considered an ocean with much to discover, and families should be comfortable allowing their children to explore it,” AAP CEO Errol Alden, M.D. said. “”But at the same time, there need to be guidelines.”
An ocean with much to discover? Last time I checked most parents weren’t dropping their kids off to explore the sea without any parental input; why should they expect that the Internet is different? The Internet is part of the real world, and thus deserves as much parental input as anything else. It’s not a search engine, website, blog, social networking site, etc.’s responsibility to parent our kids – it’s ours. Software can’t take the place of a concerned, involved parent.
