Staying safer online
Using Windows Vista and Windows Live OneCare can help protect your family and your computer
By Gloria Boyer
Browsing the web safely is more important than ever these days, what with hackers, stalkers, identity thieves, and other unsavory online characters just waiting for unsuspecting victims—or worse, their children. We all want to protect our families, our computers, and our data. Windows Vista and Windows Live offer comprehensive integrated protection for the people and assets most important to you.
Protecting children online
Since I’m the computer expert in my family, my sister asked me for help in setting up online protection for her two daughters. She wanted to make sure they didn’t have access to inappropriate online content and weren’t contacting potentially dangerous people on the Internet. My nieces are 8 and 15 years old, so they need different levels of age-appropriate protection.
We started with Family Safety from Windows Live OneCare, a program that can help protect kids from online content and websites that parents don’t want them to see. Family Safety provides default age-appropriate settings based on the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics. I then adjusted these settings to fit my sister’s children and what my sister thought was appropriate for them. Family Safety also works with Live Search to help block inappropriate search results, and with MSN Encarta to help deliver only information that's age-appropriate, so I knew my nieces wouldn’t encounter bad stuff while searching online.
I showed my sister how to use Family Safety’s activity reports to see which sites her kids are visiting. She can also see who they are talking with on instant messaging, e‑mail, or blogs. And she can approve or disapprove each new contact for Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Hotmail, and Windows Live Spaces. I showed my nieces how to ask their mom for permission to see a blocked site or to add a new Messenger, Hotmail, or Spaces contact—right from the web.
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| Children can easily request permission to visit a blocked website |
Now my sister can review and approve or block their requests from almost any web-connected computer:
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| And parents can easily approve (or deny) website access requests |
Family Safety runs on my sister’s home computer and connects to the Family Safety service, which retains her settings. This prevents her children—both of whom are pretty savvy about computers—from changing settings to disable the protection. They weren’t so pleased with their Auntie Gloria for setting this up, but I promised to make it up to them by taking them to Ireland with me next year.
Here’s how to get started with Family Safety. Go to the Family Safety website, and then click Download now. Follow the instructions on your screen.
To help manage how my nieces use the computer, I complemented Family Safety protection with Parental Controls in Windows Vista. Parental Controls allow me to set limits on my nieces’ access to the web: the hours that they can log on to the computer, which games they can play, and which programs they can run. To set up Parental Controls, I made sure the girls had standard user accounts (not administrator accounts). For more information on user accounts, see User accounts: frequently asked questions.
To turn on Parental Controls, follow these steps:
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| Open Parental Controls by clicking the Start button  , clicking Control Panel, and then, under User Accounts, clicking Set up Parental Controls.  If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation. | | 2.
| Click the standard user account for which you want to set Parental Controls. | | 3.
| Under Parental Controls, click On. | |
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Games are another area that my sister is concerned about. She knows there are violent and sexually explicit games on the market, and she doesn’t want her daughters exposed to them. Most games have game ratings that you can use to help you decide whether the game is appropriate for your children. Game ratings are set by a game ratings board, which is an organization that establishes guidelines for video game content for different regions and countries. To find out more, see How to tell if games are appropriate for children. Parental Controls keep track of the games on my nieces’ computer and make sure they can only play games that are rated as appropriate for their ages.
Protection from phishing attacks
I told my sister about how I had recently received an e‑mail that appeared to be from my bank. The e‑mail stated “This e‑mail is to inform you that your account will be suspended within 48 hours due to account inactivity. You will need to confirm certain account information in order to continue your account subscription.” I recognized this as a common online phishing attack (pronounced like the word fishing) that looks like an official notice from a trusted source, such as a bank, credit card company, or reputable online merchant, but is really a way to direct unsuspecting recipients to a fraudulent website where they’re asked to provide personal information, such as an account number or password. This information is then usually used for identity theft. My sister was eager to set up protection against this type of scam and other online threats for the computers in her house.
Windows Vista comes with Internet Explorer 7, which includes the built-in Phishing Filter to help protect you from phishing attacks. When you browse to a website that’s a known phishing site, the address bar in Internet Explorer 7 will turn red and you’ll see a warning message:
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| Warning message at a known phishing site |
If you browse to a site that’s suspected to be a phishing site, the address bar will turn yellow and you’ll see this message:
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| Warning message at a suspected phishing site |
For more information about Phishing Filter, see Phishing Filter: frequently asked questions. To download Internet Explorer 7, go to Internet Explorer 7 downloads.
In addition, Internet Explorer 7 prevents websites from automatically running ActiveX controls, helping to protect your computer. If a site attempts to automatically run an ActiveX control, Internet Explorer 7 notifies you and displays a gold bar at the top of your browser window. By right-clicking the gold bar, you can choose to run or ignore the ActiveX control. For more information about other security protections available in Internet Explorer 7, see Better browsing: Internet Explorer 7 offers improved security and productivity.
Protection from data loss
I installed Windows Live OneCare on my sister’s computer to help protect against data loss from a range of threats: viruses, worms, spyware, and hackers. OneCare scans and cleans attachments, downloads, and other files. OneCare does all this quietly in the background, so my sister doesn’t have to even think about it. In addition, it automatically updates itself so that she’ll always have the latest weapons against these threats. It will also make sure she has the Phishing Filter in Windows Internet Explorer 7 installed and turned on to help protect her personal information from phishing websites.
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| Check the status indicator in the top right corner of the Windows Live OneCare window |
The two-way firewall in OneCare can help protect my sister’s computer from hackers when she sends or receives data over the Internet. It updates continuously to block harmful applications from getting to her computer. OneCare goes beyond security, too. Performance tune-ups will automatically defragment her hard disk, clean and compress temporary files, and install operating-system updates from Microsoft. Now my sister doesn’t have to worry about any of these.
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| Windows Live OneCare handles the details so you don’t have to |
My sister knows that she needs to back up her files regularly. With OneCare backup, she can manually back up her files anytime or she can set up automatic backups to regularly back up her files to a CD, DVD, external hard drive, network drive, or other USB data-storage device. My sister also decided to subscribe to the online photo backup in OneCare, a low-cost additional feature that she values because it can help protect her precious digital memories.
You can check out OneCare by downloading a 90-day free trial. Go to Help keep your PC trouble-free
with Windows Live OneCare, and then click Download your 90-day free trial today. Before installing OneCare, make sure you uninstall any other antivirus or firewall programs that are currently running on your computer.
Integrated protection, 24/7
Now my sister doesn’t need to worry about connecting to the Internet, either for herself or for her children. With Windows Live OneCare and Windows Vista on her side, the bad guys don’t stand a chance!
About the author
Gloria Boyer is a writer on the Windows team at Microsoft. Formerly a network administrator, she now writes about Windows networking. She's also a poet, an artist, a dancer, a juggler, a gardener, a cat lover, and not particularly tall.
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Firewall
Software or hardware that can help protect a computer from hackers or malicious software. A firewall helps prevent malicious software (such as worms) from gaining access to a computer through a network or over the Internet, and helps prevent a computer from sending malicious software to other computers.
Phishing
A technique used to trick computer users into revealing personal or financial information. A common online phishing scam starts with an e‑mail message that appears to come from a trusted source but actually directs recipients to provide information to a fraudulent website.
Worm
A self-replicating program, similar to a virus. A worm can make it possible for a malicious user to take over your computer or can send out enough copies of itself to cause your computer or a web or network server to stop responding.
Spyware
Software that can display advertisements (such as pop-up ads), collect information about you, or change settings on your computer, generally without appropriately obtaining your consent.
Virus
A malicious computer program designed specifically to replicate itself and spread from computer to computer. A virus may damage hardware, software, or data.
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