Locking down browser for kids
!!11oneone
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My stepdaughter is only 10 and has her 'own' laptop, which she mostly uses for Minecraft and watching YouTube.
Everytime I go on it, it's riddled with adware, the browser start page is hijacked and she's got all kinds of rubbish. Obviously, and this is entirely expected, she can't discern a dodgy website from a good one and would surely click on a pop up that said "you've got a virus".
She was using an administrator account, which her dad set up for her. I've changed this to a normal user account (and added a passworded administrator), but this doesn't stop her messing up the browser with dodgy extensions or toolbars and from the homepage being changed.
How can I lock down Chrome so she can't change it? And is being a 'user' ok for her purposes or are there deeper security settings I should alter? Minecraft doesn't install, so she does need to be able to run a straight exe file.
EDIT - in trying to install a Minecraft mod for her, I've discovered where all this crap comes from. All the major minecraft sites use some very dubious download servers which have lots of lovely, misleading buttons, ads that are compulsory and which on the whole Adblock seriously dislikes!
Everytime I go on it, it's riddled with adware, the browser start page is hijacked and she's got all kinds of rubbish. Obviously, and this is entirely expected, she can't discern a dodgy website from a good one and would surely click on a pop up that said "you've got a virus".
She was using an administrator account, which her dad set up for her. I've changed this to a normal user account (and added a passworded administrator), but this doesn't stop her messing up the browser with dodgy extensions or toolbars and from the homepage being changed.
How can I lock down Chrome so she can't change it? And is being a 'user' ok for her purposes or are there deeper security settings I should alter? Minecraft doesn't install, so she does need to be able to run a straight exe file.
EDIT - in trying to install a Minecraft mod for her, I've discovered where all this crap comes from. All the major minecraft sites use some very dubious download servers which have lots of lovely, misleading buttons, ads that are compulsory and which on the whole Adblock seriously dislikes!
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Whilst I don't think you are going to be able to lock down Chrome itself you can always try and block the worst of the malicious content so that (in theory) it doesn't even reach the computer. Check out OpenDNS.
I'll have a look at OpenDNS, thanks. Though I'd rather not put network-wide security on. I'm sure there must be a similar local piece of software that will run everything through a local proxy?
If you are using Windows 8, there are lots of Family Safety options. You can have a whitelist of sites which are the only ones that can be accessed.
I use it at home and it has saved a whole lot of grief.
Very adaptable for all members of the family.
I've used Privoxy successfully in the past, both locally and run on the router, for ad-stripping.
Ah ok. I'll look at that. Did seem that I could do it but they don't really mention it!