FAMILY & SAFETY
When you’re setting up a family PC with multiple adult/child users, it’s imperative that you have everyone using their own accounts – and put restrictions on what the kids can access. At least until they’re old enough to put restrictions on you…
SET UP CHILD ACCOUNTS
The first thing you need to do on a family PC, if you haven’t already, is to give everyone their own account, especially the youth wing of the household. This means they don’t have the licence to wreak havoc that comes with running on the admin account, allowing them to install whatever they like – and whatever merry hell comes with the stuff they downloaded. It also allows you to impose time limits, content restrictions and so forth.
To set up a child account, go to Settings, Accounts and then select “Family & others” from the left-hand menu. Click “Add a family member” and follow the instructions to set up a child account. Microsoft is now pretty insistent that kids must have their own email address to link to the account. It’s probably best to let Microsoft have its way and create an email account for the child, even if you never let them use it (you can set the password). It enables some of the reporting tools we’ll come to later.
DON’T GIVE THEM A PASSWORD
Without wishing to patronise the yoof, if you let them set their own password you’ll likely end up with something easily hackable. If you try to set them a secure password, you’ll be nagged approximately eight times a day because they’ve forgotten it.
If your laptop is suitably equipped, you could let them log in with their fingerprint or Windows Hello face recognition. Otherwise, a compromise is to set a secure password and then create a PIN that allows them to log into the computer with an easy-to-remember four-digit code, whilst leaving their Microsoft account safely protected by a secure password that you can log in your password manager or elsewhere.
To apply a fingerprint, face recognition or PIN, log in to their account on the computer, click on Settings, Accounts and select “Sign-in options” from the left-hand side. Follow the onscreen instructions for your method of choice.
RESTRICT SCREEN TIME
Parents’ biggest battle these days is to detach their kids from their screens (note that it’s probably you setting the bad example).
Microsoft rides to the rescue here with the ability to limit the time the sprogs can spend on their Windows PC and Xbox consoles. Time can be limited in multiple ways. You can set the hours between which they’re allowed to use the PC/console, you can set a hard time limit (say four hours) of daily usage or you can use a combination of the two, as you can see from our screenshot above. What’s more, these settings can be different for every day of the week, so you can give them a bit more latitude on Friday evenings or weekends.
These settings are controlled when the parent logs into their account at account.microsoft.com/family . (Assuming, of course, you identified yourself as the parent of the child when you first set up the account.)
DON’T RELY ON WINDOWS BLOCKING
When you’re in the online family dashboard mentioned above, you’ll notice other options to block content. Just be wary of using Windows’ tools, especially for web-content blocking, as they’re far from foolproof and place unnecessary restrictions on users.
LET KIDS SET THEIR OWN PASSWORD AND YOU’LL LIKELY END UP WITH SOMETHING EASILY HACKABLE
Whilst we’ve no problems with the tools that allow you to block/permit individual apps on child accounts, the web-content blocking has holes. In our tests, with unsuitable web content blocked for our test ten-yearold, it did block searches for terms such as “porn” and access to wellknown porn sites in Microsoft Edge. However, if you opened an InPrivate browsing window in the child’s browser, all content was let through. Other parents have reported seeing the same problem online, even though the Family dashboard reports that InPrivate browsing is blocked.
The other problem with relying on Windows’ filtering is that it only works in Edge. To stop kids working around this by simply downloading another browser, Microsoft blocks the installation of popular browsers when you switch content filtering on. That is, to put it mildly, convenient for a company that’s pushing Edge heavily. It might also prevent your kids from accessing services such as Google Stadia, which demand to use the Chrome browser alone.
It’s probably best to avoid Windows for web-content blocking and apply the tools provided by either your broadband provider or a thirdparty security suite. None of these are perfect, but nor are they as hard to work around as Microsoft’s tools.
GIVE THEM POCKET MONEY
Two of the chief advantages of setting up a child account are (a) you can prevent them from installing new apps without permission; and (b) they can ask you to pay for apps/content, or you can put credit on their Microsoft account to let them buy it themselves.
If a child account holder goes into the Microsoft Store and tries to buy something – a movie or Minecraft, say – they won’t get any further than the payment screen. Here, however, they can send a request to the parent’s account, asking them to authorise the purchase. Mum, dad or carer gets an email asking them if they want to buy said item, which they can authorise from the Family dashboard and pay with on their own account. Obviously, this only works with purchases via the Microsoft Store, not apps/games bought randomly off the internet.
To give the kids a bit more leeway, you can add funds to their Microsoft account and allows them to buy age-appropriate content. You’ll still be informed what they’re buying from the Store, but it’s less oppressive for older kids who don’t have to come nagging for money.