Thoughts on Vista Parental Controls

Over the weekend one of our investors contacted me because he was very concerned that our business would be impacted by what Microsoft is doing with parental controls. His exact comments were “I am seeing TV commercials this weekend from Microsoft and they are now doing parental controls!”

At first I was somewhat concerned, as the last thing a company like ours needs is Microsoft stepping in and crushing us with a competing product. I then did some research to satisfy my concerns and am actually very excited with what Microsoft is advertising for parental controls!

Basically, their parental controls solution that comes with Vista addresses the following areas: website filtering, content blocking, time limitations, games, and the view of web history. All very good areas, however these filters definitely give the parents enough awareness into what their children are doing online!

I am of the opinion (and let’s not forget that I am partial to imView for obvious reasons) that parents should definitely utilize parental controls that come with their operating systems because of the great features. In particular, I am a fan of setting time limits and the blocking of certain applications. However, parents should be most concerned with what is going on with regards to instant messaging (and not just MSN) and search activity.

With a product such as imView working in conjunction with Vista parental controls parents now have the ability to basically capture all the activity on their children’s computer. Additionally, and not that I want to say anything negative about Microsoft, their parental controls DO NOT offer parents the ability the view the data remotely. With all of busy schedules it is not always convenient to go to the actual pc you are monitoring. We have and will continue to create web-based solutions for our busy parents so they can get the level of awareness they require without having to physically be at the pc they are monitoring.

If you have questions regarding this posting, please feel free to contact me directly at Michael@imview.net and if you are interested in exploring a more advanced level of parental controls please visit: www.imview.com