The Shocking Truth About AOL Parental Controls

by Andre Bell

Published on this site: November 7th, 2005 - See more articles from this month

Despite the dotcom shake up, 46% of U.S. internet surfers are still using America Online. It would stand to reason then, that a least 46% of all kids have access to the internet through an AOL account set up by their parents.

As a parent you know the dangers of leaving children with unsupervised access to the internet. You wouldn't even consider doing such a thing. That's why you've taken advantage of AOL's parental controls so now your children cannot become exploited by predators stalking chat rooms and your children cannot access perverted web sites.

Or can they…

If you are like most AOL parents you've put too much stock into AOL's parental controls.

There's a nasty little secret that `smart' children everywhere have discovered that allows them to get around your parental control settings and gain full access to the internet, when mom and dad are not looking. And AOL allows this!

What is this new `tool' teens and younger children are using to bypass parental controls? It's the Guest account that resides within AOL's software.

You might be thinking that since you have not set up a Guest account and have only given your children access to the internet through their own restricted parental-controlled account, the Guest account is useless to them.

That is untrue.

Teens across America are trading `Guest' account logins at school so they can communicate with each other freely in chat rooms, without mom and dad's knowledge. That means your kid can come home and access the internet using AOL's Guest account feature and have full access to the Internet without your knowledge.

Think this isn't happening?

Here's clue number one that you may be fooling yourself: you think your kids are not computer literate just because you are not.

Clue number two: your kids are sitting and `just playing games' on the computer for hours on end, even when you are not home.

The reality is that your kids probably know more about computers than you do and they are probably trading AOL accounts so they can surf the Internet while you cluelessly sit at work or have gone shopping, thinking you've successfully locked your kids out of the internet and have successfully taken steps to protect them from harmful sites and from being exploited.

This scenario is being repeated everyday and in nearly every community. It doesn't have to be that way.

So what do you do about it?

1. Remove the Guest account. Depending on your version of AOL software you can lock out that Guest account from ever being used. Most parents have NOT taken this step. So far, out of more than 200 AOL parents I've spoken to, not one has known to do this. Many of their teens have already exploited that account. (I'm now on the kids `hit' list for letting mom and dad know about this)
   
   
2. Use a third-party parental control software program that `watches' all computer activities even when you are not at home. A good parental control program can be found at www.tueagles.com. I found it to be much more effective than NetNanny and other parental control programs costing twice as much. It logs web sites visited, takes pictures of what the kids were looking at, and blocks access to chat rooms and pornography in many areas of the internet that you probably didn't even know existed.
   
   
3. Give your kids their own Windows login. Stop letting them login to your computer with the same Windows account you are using. After giving the kids their own login, change their Windows account to an ordinary `user', instead of the default administrator setting that Windows gives to everyone by default. If you do not change their account to a regular user then your child can get around any security settings you put in place. Since children have grown up using computers they are smarter than you think they are and they likely have friends who own several tools that will breach your parental controls.
   
   
4. Keep your version of Windows up-to-date by frequently visiting http://update.microsoft.com. There are numerous `hacker' type tools available that will let your kids change their `user' account to an administrator account without your permission. Once they have administrator access they can do what they want without your permission. They can even use tools to get your login information. Microsoft has taken steps to plug many of those security holes. However, those holes can only be filled if you keep your operating system up-to-date.

Is it worth it to go through these steps? That can only be answered by asking yourself how important is the sanity and well-being of your children. I suspect since you've read this far it's very important to you. So `just do it', as Nike used to say.

Once you've locked down access to the internet you can return to the fantasy land where we believe that all children are safe and there's no need to fear the internet.

Andre Bell is an author and Microsoft Certified Professional who has worked as a system administrator, an independent computer technician, and as a technical support specialist for UPS. He has authored The Internet Identity Theft Protection DVD. To request a free copy of this DVD go to www.noidtheft.net/free