IT question

[SensualCealy]

Okay, there are 4 users on my computer, my husband, my daughter, my son and myself.

Kids have put passwords on their users so now I cant observe whats going on while they are on the computer.
Im not trying to be nosey, just keeping an eye on 'her' to make sure she isnt doing anything stupid.

How do I get into her user, without taking off the password, there has to be a back door somewhere.
Ive tried going through the C-drive but it keeps saying the shortcuts have been moved...etc.

Help anyone?
C

 

[cowboy_choji]

You could try something like cyber patrolhttp://www.cyberpatrol.com/, I dont know how good it is though, but something similer would work.

 

[mjl2010]

I'm assuming windows, which version, it makes a difference sometimes.

 

[SweetErika]

You could simply tell them they are not allowed to password protect their accounts without telling you or your hubby what their password is at all times.

If I were using XP and had Administrator privileges, I'd simply change each password, and even make sure they had limited account privileges. Then, I'd tell each kid what their new pw was, and that I needed to be able to access their account at times. I'd also ensure both Hubby and I had secure passwords (at least 9 characters, a mix of letters and numbers and something the kids couldn't guess) as administrators so the kids couldn't get into our accounts to change passwords or privileges.

The way to get into the accounts is Start>Control Panel>User Accounts. From there, it should ask you whether you want to add accounts, change privileges, passwords, etc.

We could also put the computer in a very conspicuous place, so we could see what they were doing all the time. I'd think they'd be more excited about having a little bit of privacy than that, although it's never a bad idea to take that kind of precaution.

Or, you could use a program to spy on them, like Cowboy suggested. I don't know if those can be applied to just some users, or if they're applied to the entire computer, however.

 

[Guest]

Now, if what you want to do is spying without their knowledge, you should invest on a good spy software.

Unless you are an IT wiz I'd not rely on spying. It does not take a lot of googling for a child to learn to cover his tracks. The evildoers teach them how to do it. You would be completely oblivious.

With my kid I would prefer that he did not expect total privacy.

If they want the password so the other sibling does not intrude, etc., you should still insist on knowing their password. They should know and expect you to check on them.

Make yourself an administrator so you can enforce this. Remove administrator permissions from their accounts.

Maharat

 

[littlebitshe]

You are the PARENT! You don't have to "spy" and try to hack your child's password. You make the rules, not them! All you have to do is say they don't use the computer if they feel they need a password set on their account. Or like Erica said, you must know their password so that you may go into their profile at any time.

The idea of having the family computer out in the open (like the kitchen or living room) is a GREAT one! That way you can monitor everything that is going on while your children are on the computer. There are scary people online that are preying over children of all ages. You owe it to your children to know EXACTLY what is going on in their computer use.

Perfect Example:
My cousin, who is 13 (looks 18 or 19), is meeting and chatting with much older guys online. She thrives on the attention that they give her, as MANY young girls do, and that could VERY possibly get her into a very bad situation one day. Her parents allow her to have her own computer in the privacy of her own room and they have told her that she must show them her myspace account and other accounts. She's sneaky though... she goes in and deletes all of the bad stuff (emails from guys, revealing pictures of herself, etc) and changes things on her account before her parents view it. They also rarely ever check in on her online use.

My point is... don't allow this to be your child. It's too dangerous!!

 

[Weird Harold]

How do I get into her user, without taking off the password, there has to be a back door somewhere.
Ive tried going through the C-drive but it keeps saying the shortcuts have been moved...etc.

The attached image is a sectionof my windows folder structure -- normally the profiles folder is a subfolder under C:\Windows\ but I've tweaked my system to put it on I: partition.

Note that the bottom folder under my profile is "temporary internet files" where you should be able to find what pages they've been to and what images they've been looking at. (Irfanview's browse function is usefull for browsing temporary internet files because it shows you thumbnails of all images in a folder and will also let you access some other types of files.)

Note, if their temporary internet files have been cleared or moved, they've probably got something to hide.

Also note that each user has their own desktop folder, where you'll find all of the shortcuts to the programs they have on their desktops (although not the background image they use)

In the startup folder is almost everything on their startup menu -- including shortcuts to the most recenty used documents; unless they've cleared the MRU folder.

All of these folders should be accessible from the Admin UserID or a supervisory level User ID (In win XP and later; in earlier versions of Windows it's accessible to anyone who knows that everything starts in "C:\Windows" even if the Windows Folder is "hidden."

With the FIND;Files and Folders function on the start menu, you can search for *.HTML and find the complete HTML files they've downloaded into their temporary internet files folders (or saved)

With the Find function, you can find all of their *.DOC, *.TXT, *.JPG, WMV, MPeG and other files. Including their IM Logs if you know part of the the file name or file extension to search for. I think you do have to set the search preferences somewhere to find and show system and hidden files to get the temporary internet files, but everything else should be just a matter of composing the search terms.

There are "Net Nanny" programs to monitor their usage, but I wouldn't install one unless there was some "probable cause" greater than putting passwords on their account to keep nosy siblings out (and maybe nosy parents.)

You'll note that there are several other users on my computer as well -- they're seldom used but I assigned the passwords when I created them and insisit that I know what the password is if it's changed. My daughter and son-in-law followed that example when they set up their home network for them and the two granddaughters -- they don't have to share with siblings, but they do have to share passwords with the 'rents.

 

[kindashy]

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/tips/advanced/adminaccount.mspx

You, as the owner of the computer, are also an Administrator, also known as Super User, of the computer. You can see anything and everything that other users of this computer have been doing.

 

[SensualCealy]

Thanks guys,

I have already changed both of their accounts to limited. Our son has been messing around with the computer the last few days trying to set up wireless internet service, which he hasnt asked permission to do. His dad, my husband knows this and will be deleting everything he has done this weekend.

I dont want to piss anyone off because you all have good ideas, but...

It ticks me off when people say, YOU ARE THE PARENT tell them what you want...I have, I do, I will continue to do so, but when one is 17 and frankly knows a shit load about computers he figures out a way to get into doing what he wants. Now our daughter, Im just trying to keep an eye on what she is doing, who she is talking to, etc. Its not like the old days when you would be washing the dishes and they would be sitting talking on the phone and you could hear at least one side of the conversation.

In most cases my kids are good, Im just worried especially for my daughter and who she adds as her contacts.

The latest thing she has done, and Im not sure how she did it or how I can take it off is, when I go through my computer to her files and go to open them, it says I cant. She doesnt have a password on her account but yet when I go into her files through my user on my computer I cant see what files she has. Now when I go on the hard drive, I can see the files, I just cant open them because it says the shortcuts have been moved or changed or something like that.

This is so frustrating!
C

 

[Weird Harold]

In most cases my kids are good, Im just worried especially for my daughter and who she adds as her contacts.

The latest thing she has done, and Im not sure how she did it or how I can take it off is, ... when I go into her files through my user on my computer I cant see what files she has. Now when I go on the hard drive, I can see the files, I just cant open them because it says the shortcuts have been moved or changed or something like that.

It may not be something she has done, but a peculiarity of Windows; Each user has a "My Documents" folder and many programs automatically install sub-folders relative to the My Documents folder that's active at the time. When you access her shortcuts through your account, the "My Documents" reference in her shortcuts is interpreted as your My Documents folder.

One thing you need to do is talk to your daughter about why you're "snooping" and what she has to hide. If necessary, Locking down her internet access or even her user account for a week might get her attention.

 

[Ezzy]

Make sure you are in on the wireless setup or that your husband is, and once it is up and running, change the admin password to one your son doesn't know.

You can use the router for 4 hardlines as well as as many wireless connections as you allow.

The router software allows you to monitor each IP on the network and to see the history etc.

 

[great lover]

Make sure you are in on the wireless setup or that your husband is, and once it is up and running, change the admin password to one your son doesn't know.

You can use the router for 4 hardlines as well as as many wireless connections as you allow.

The router software allows you to monitor each IP on the network and to see the history etc.

If you are on linux, I could help you setup the machine.

 

[temp256]

This is just my opinion, but all of you sound like paranoid control freaks. I've had complete computer and internet privacy nearly my whole life, and I don't know what I would have done without it. Being able to come to someplace like this forum for all my questions has greatly helped my life, and I couldn't have done it with someone watching me.

No one ever needed to tell me not do reveal personal information because it seemed obvious and intuitive. My suggestion is to tell them what they need to know, and turn them loose. If they can't have privacy at home, they'll go somewhere they can. You can't protect them forever.

 

[Weird Harold]

This is just my opinion, but all of you sound like paranoid control freaks. I've had complete computer and internet privacy nearly my whole life, and I don't know what I would have done without it. Being able to come to someplace like this forum for all my questions has greatly helped my life, and I couldn't have done it with someone watching me.

"Paranoid control freak" and "Concerned Parent" sound an awful lot alike -- it just depends on which side of the issue you're on.

Unfortunately, a "Concerned Parent" who doesn't act at least a little like a "paranoid control freak" usually regrets it, sometimes tragically regrets it.

Then there's also the issue of what is getting downloaded or uploaded onto a shared computer -- a worm or virus downloaded by one unsupervised user affects everyone using the computer.

 

[kindashy]

This is just my opinion, but all of you sound like paranoid control freaks.

Thank you for the compliment.

 

[SensualCealy]

This is just my opinion, but all of you sound like paranoid control freaks. I've had complete computer and internet privacy nearly my whole life, and I don't know what I would have done without it. Being able to come to someplace like this forum for all my questions has greatly helped my life, and I couldn't have done it with someone watching me.

No one ever needed to tell me not do reveal personal information because it seemed obvious and intuitive. My suggestion is to tell them what they need to know, and turn them loose. If they can't have privacy at home, they'll go somewhere they can. You can't protect them forever.

Fuck off! Be a parent, wait, be a good parent, then tell me what Im doing is wrong!
Asshole!
C

 

[cd1_christine]

Okay, there are 4 users on my computer, my husband, my daughter, my son and myself.

Kids have put passwords on their users so now I cant observe whats going on while they are on the computer.
C

If the kids have passwords on their accounts, ophcrack will crack 95+% of passwords that I've seen. It'll let you know what their password is without them knowing that you know. That way, they won't necessarily modify their behaviour, because they think they're still safe.

Index.dat analyzer can then give you a history of everything Internet Explorer has done, including when parts of it are used in another program, like MSN messenger, Google Earth, and the like.
Literally everything done online using the computer is available using this, unless you use Firefox, Opera, or some other alternative browser. The flipside is that it lets you delete individual history records, so the kids could potentially use it to remove the history of anything they shouldn't be doing, if they found it. You may want to remove the shortcuts from the start menu for the program, so you have to start it by going to c:\Program Files\etc.etc.

You could also go with a keylogger and screencapture utility, although a lot of antivirus software will flag these as viruses, and delete them, so you may have to do some tweaking to your AV software, if it even allows it. Some do, some don't.

Or, you could do what one of my customers does, and password protect the booting of the computer. The kids can't even use it without the password being typed in by the parents.

 

[Mazuri]

My daughter (16) has her own computer in her room, not a shared machine. She is set up as Admin on that computer as well as my husband and I. She was given directions on what she could and could not do and knows we check these on occasion when we feel the need to: no P2P software, no Torrents, we are 'friends' on her MySpace, no giving out of personal information online, etc. If these are broken, I have a key that locks the case to her computer so she can't boot up. If she finds a work around to that, she knows I will simply sell the machine. I've done that before with other things she's pushed too far.

Does she chat with folks on myspace/facebook? Probably. Does she surf porn or go to other sites that I'm sure other parents would freak out over? I'm sure. In two years, however, she will be college aged and outside my supervision. She needs this opportunity to explore with a safety net before that net is pulled. Besides, once something is no longer forbidden, it's not quite as alluring.

However, she has two friends who have no oversight at all who have 'boyfriends' online who are totally inappropriate in my mind: one is a (supposed) ex-convict and the other a gang-member being investigated for murder. They could be total HNGs, but regardless, it just shows that whatever you choose to do, however amount of privacy you allow your child online, should be based solely on your child and your relationship with that child.

 

[Oblimo]

Be aware (or beware) the unlisted Administrator account on Windows XP.

In typical installs, Windows XP sets up an account called "Administrator" and hides it so that it only appears when you boot a certain way (into Safe Mode). Also, typically, this account has no password, and it has access to all user and system folders.

So if your son is industrious, he may access this account to muck about. (Or you can use it to muck about yourself); be sure to password protect it if you are concerned.

But if he's really industrious and nerdy, he can just put together a DVD that boots Linux and do anything he wants, undetectable and unstoppable.

 

[Oblimo]

If the kids have passwords on their accounts, ophcrack will crack 95+% of passwords that I've seen. It'll let you know what their password is without them knowing that you know. That way, they won't necessarily modify their behaviour, because they think they're still safe.

Cracking Windows passwords is, believe it or not, a potential Federal crime. O_O Really limited what I could advise when providing tech support. XD

 

[SensualCealy]

Thanks everyone, things are a bit better now, I have them both on limited which pissed them off, but OH well!
My son has his computer up and running again, so he can mess around with it all he wants, instead of ours!

As for my daughter, Im hoping its just an attention thing, both people she has been talking to she no longer accepts text messages from on her phone so thats a start. Im working on it, so hopefully it will sink in soon.

C

 

[albertaboy]

Thanks everyone, things are a bit better now, I have them both on limited which pissed them off, but OH well!
My son has his computer up and running again, so he can mess around with it all he wants, instead of ours!

As for my daughter, Im hoping its just an attention thing, both people she has been talking to she no longer accepts text messages from on her phone so thats a start. Im working on it, so hopefully it will sink in soon.

C

Dont listen to those who call you paranoid. We give our kids alot of freedom, but we don't give them that much. When my 15 year old daughter was 11, she got into a chat with some perv that we found doing a history search and used it as a lesson for her. My wife checks regularly on her laptop where she has been, my daughter knows this and all is cool. There is plenty of trouble for a 15 year old to get into in the real world, let alone cyberspace. We try hard to make her think about this stuff, and calling her on it occasionally helps that.