Keeping track

[Guest]

I have a 10 year old son that is quite interested in the internet, and my
husband and I were discussing his interest in 'girls' the other day... I
went on to the 'temporary internet files' to look to see what sites he's been
on, and there were no sites or cookies! I assumed that he'd deleted them
when he was done on the computer (he's more computer savvy than we are), but
when I opened them up after I had used the computer today, none of my sites
were listed either! Is there any way to get these files and cookies to save
for all sites visited??? We don't want to adjust the content settings
viewable, as my husband and I receive a lot of emails, and it's quite a
hassle to enter the password in so often.

Please help!

Thank you,
Confused in FL

 

[Ted Zieglar]

The very first thing you need to learn about is parental control software.
Then you need to start learning how your computer works, because your son
certainly is. I love my son too, but I don't want him getting himself or me
into trouble.

To store temporary internet files, you need to allocate them space on the
hard disk. Do this from Tools > Internet Options > General tab (it's the
first one that opens) > Temporary Internet Files - Settings button. For a
broadband connection you'll need something like 10 or 20MB.

To store internet history you need to set the number of days to store. Do
this from Tools > Internet Options > General tab (it's the first one that
opens) > History - Days to keep pages in history.

Keep in mind that TIF and History are not reliable ways to determine where
someone has been on the internet - that's not why they were created. Both
TIF and History can be erased and in any case, TIF can contain page elements
from pages your son didn't actually click on.

 

[Guest]

Believe me, I am trying to figure it out! Any suggestions on parental
control software??

I knew about the settings... they are 252 MB and 20 days, respectively.
Still, they are not saving. XP is new to me... on Windows 98, I know they
saved almost every page visited. Is this not the case for XP? I did find a
separate folder for Cookies while exploring the C: drive under Local Settings
, but it didn't show a daily record, either. Merely 20 or so files since
October.

Thanks for any help you can provide...

 

[Ted Zieglar]

My son is 4 so the parental control software you'll need is very different
from the one I have. If I was in the market for that type of software I
would do what I usually do: Look on the web for product reviews (and ask for
advice from other parents).

There is a setting in IE to erase TIF when the browser has closed. (It's in
the Advanced tab of Internet Options.) That feature doesn't always work
properly, but it usually does.

Your son may have also learned of a third-party utility that will erase or
fail to maintain TIF and History. Hacks like that are easily found on the
internet but the best of them are found in the playground during recess.

 

[MAP]

Believe me, I am trying to figure it out! Any suggestions on parental
control software??

Reviews of parental control programs.
http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/

You can also use a index.dat viewer (for now anyway) deleting the temp.
internet files does not delete what is stored in here, it will display every
website the computer has been to.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2006-
01,GGLD:en&q=index%2Edat+viewer

Note: The WinSpy one is nice and very simple, however some malware scanners
report a false positive when this is installed because their is malware of
the same name.

 

[Ed]

Do you have separate user logons, with separate user folders for these
elements? One control measure could be to set yourself up as Administrator
and restrict your son to a User level. That allows you to restrict programs
and all kinds of things, including what he can and cannot delete.

HTH
Ed

 

[Guest]

Thank you to everyone who responded!

We ended up buying and downloading the software for PC Pandora. I truly
recommend it! Not only was it relatively cheap, but quite easy to use. It's
a hidden application (you have to enter a site key to enter it!!) and
completely password driven, so the little monster can't delete it.... Who
knew something this easy existed?! (yes, that's a rhetorical question,
all....)