Tài liệu Parental Controls pptx

Parental Controls If you're setting up a Standard account, the Parental Controls checkbox affords you the opportunity to shield your Mac—or its very young, very fearful, or very mischiev

12.3 Parental Controls

If you're setting up a Standard account, the Parental Controls checkbox affords you the opportunity to shield your Mac—or its very young, very fearful, or very mischievous operator—from confusion and harm This is a helpful feature to remember when you're setting up accounts for students, young children, or easily intimidated adults (This

checkbox is available for Admin accounts, too, but trying to turn it on produces only a

"Silly rabbit—this is for kids!" sort of message.)

Leopard introduces a lot more peace of mind for parents than other operating systems You can now specify how many hours a day each person is allowed to use the Mac, and declare certain hours (like sleeping hours) off-limits You can specify exactly who your kids are allowed to communicate with via email (if they use Mail) and instant messaging (if they use iChat), what Web sites they can visit (if they use Safari), what programs they're allowed to use, and even what words they can look up in the Mac OS X

Dictionary

Here are all the ways you can keep your little Standard account holders shielded from the Internet—and themselves For sanity's sake, the following discussion refers to the

Standard account holder as "your child."But some of these controls—notably those in the System category—are equally useful for people of any age who feel overwhelmed by the Mac, are inclined to mess it up by not knowing what they're doing, or are tempted to mess it up deliberately

Note: If you use any of these options, the account type listed on the Accounts panel

changes from "Standard" to "Managed."

12.3.1 System

On this tab, you see the options shown in Figure 12-5 Use these options to limit what your Managed-account flock is allowed to do You can limit them to using certain

programs, for example, or prevent them from burning DVDs, changing settings, or

fiddling with your printer setups

(Limiting what people can do to your Mac when you're not looking is a handy feature under any shared-computer circumstance But if there's one word tattooed on its

forehead, it would be "Classrooms!")

On the panel that pops up when you click Configure, you have two options: "Use Simple Finder" and "Only allow selected applications."

12.3.1.1 Use Simple Finder

If you're really concerned about somebody's ability to survive the Mac—or the Mac's ability to survive them—turn on "Use Simple Finder." Then turn on the checkboxes of the programs that person is allowed to use

Suppose you're the lucky Mac fan who's been given a Simple Finder account When you log in, you discover the barren world shown in Figure 12-6 There are only three menus ( , Finder, and File), a single onscreen window, no hard drive icon, and a bare-bones Dock The only folders you can see are in the Dock They include:

• My Applications These are aliases of the applications that the administrator

approved They appear on a strange, fixed, icon view, called "pages." List and column views don't exist The Simple person can't move, rename, delete, sort, or change the display of these icons—merely click them If you have too many to fit

on one screen, you get numbered page buttons beneath them, which you click to move from one set to another

Figure 12-5 In the Parental Controls window, you can control the capabilities

of any account holder on your Mac In the lower half of the System tab window, you can choose applications and even Dashboard widgets by turning

on the boxes next to their names (Expand the flippy triangles if necessary.) Those are the only programs these account holders will be allowed to use (The new Search box helps you find certain programs without knowing their

categories.)

• Documents Behind the scenes, this is your Home Documents folder Of

course, as a Simple Finder kind of soul, you don't have a visible Home folder All your stuff goes in here

• Shared This is the same Shared folder described on Section 12.6.2 It's provided

so that you and other account holders can exchange documents However, you can't open any of the folders here, only the documents

• Trash The Trash is here, but you won't use it much Selecting or dragging any icon is against the rules, so you're left with no obvious means of putting anything into your Trash

Figure 12-6 The Simple Finder doesn't feel like home—unless you've got one of those Spartan, space-age, Dr Evil–style pads But it can be just the ticket for less-skilled Mac users, with few options and a basic one click interface Every program

in the My Applications folder is actually an alias to the real program, which is safely

ensconced in the off-limits Applications folder

The only programs with their own icons in the Dock are Finder and Dashboard

Otherwise, you can essentially forget everything else you've read in this book You can't create folders, move icons, or do much of anything beyond clicking the icons that your benevolent administrator has provided It's as though Mac OS X moved away and left you the empty house

• To keep things extra-simple, Mac OS X permits only one window at a time to be open It's easy to open icons, too, because one click opens it, not two

• The File menu is stunted, offering only a Close Window command The Finder

menu only gives you two options: About Finder and Run Full Finder (The latter command prompts you for an administrator's user name and password, and then turns back into the regular Finder—a handy escape hatch To return to Simple Finder, just choose Finder Return to Simple Finder.)

• The menu is really bare-bones: You can Log Out, Force Quit, or go to Sleep

That's it

• There's no trace of Spotlight

Although the Simple Finder is simple, any program (at least, any that the administrator has permitted) can run from Simple Finder A program running inside the Simple Finder still has all of its features and complexities—only the Finder has been whittled down to its essence

In other words, Simple Finder is great for streamlining the Finder, but novices won't get far combating their techno-fear until the world presents us with Simple Keynote, Simple Mail, and Simple Microsoft Word Still, it's better than nothing

When Simple people try to save documents, they'll find that although the Save box lists the usual locations (Desktop, Applications, and so on), they can in fact save files only into their own Home folders or subfolders inside them

12.3.1.2 Only allow selected applications

By tinkering with the checkboxes here, you can declare certain programs off-limits to this account holder, or turn off his ability to remove Dock icons, burn CDs, and so on

You can restrict this person's access to the Mac in several different ways:

• Limit the programs At the bottom of the dialog box shown in Figure 12-5, you see

a list of all the programs in your Applications folder (an interesting read in its own right) Only checked items show up in the account holder's Applications folder

Tip: If you don't see a program listed, use the Search box, or drag its icon from the

Finder into the window

If, for instance, you're setting up an account for use in the classroom, you may want to turn off access to programs like Disk Utility, iChat, and Tomb Raider

• Limit the features When you first create them, Standard account holders are free

to burn CDs or DVDs, modify what's on the Dock, change their passwords, and view the settings of all System Preferences panels (although they can't change all

of these settings)

Depending on your situation, you may find it useful to turn off some of these options In

a school lab, for example, you might want to turn off the ability to burn discs (to block software piracy) If you're setting up a Mac for a technophobe, you might want to turn off the ability to change the Dock (so your colleague won't accidentally lose access to his own programs and work)

12.3.2 Content (Dictionary and Web)

"Content," in this case, means "two options we really didn't have any other place to put." Actually, what it really means is Dictionary and Safari

12.3.2.1 Hide profanity in Dictionary

As you know from Chapter 10, Mac OS X comes with a complete electronic copy of the New Oxford American Dictionary And "complete," in this case, means "it even has swear words."

Turning on "Hide profanity in Dictionary" is like having an Insta-Censor™ It hides most

of the naughty words from the dictionary whenever your young account holder is logged

in (Figure 12-7)

Figure 12-7 Something's oddly missing from the Dictionary when Parental Controls

are turned on: dirty words

12.3.2.2 Web S ite Restrictions

This feature is designed to limit which Web sites your kid is allowed to visit

Frankly, trying to block the racy stuff from the Web is something of a hopeless task; if your kid doesn't manage to get round this blockade by simply using a different browser, he'll just wind up seeing the dirty pictures at another kid's house But at least you can enjoy the illusion of taking a stand, using approaches of three degrees of severity:

• Allow unrestricted access to Web sites In other words, no filtering Anything

goes

• Try to limit access to adult Web sites automatically Those words—"try to"—are

Apple's way of admitting that no filter is foolproof

In any case, Mac OS X comes with a built-in database of Web sites that it already knows may be inappropriate for children—and these sites won't appear in Safari while this account holder is logged in By clicking Customize and then editing the

"Always allow" and "Never allow" lists, you can override its decisions on a siteat-a-time basis

• Allow access to only these Web sites This is the most restrictive approach of all:

It's a whitelist, a list of the only Web sites your youngster is allowed to visit It's filled with kid-friendly sites like Disney and Discovery Kids, but of course you can edit the list by clicking the + and–buttons below the list

12.3.3 Mail & iChat

Here, you can build a list of email and chat addresses, corresponding to the people you feel comfortable letting your kid exchange emails and chat with Click the + button below the list, type the address, press Enter, lather, rinse, and repeat

Tip: No, you can't drag cards in from your Address Book; that would be much too

simple But after clicking the + button to create a new row in the list (in Edit mode), you can drag just the email address out of an Address Book card that you've opened up

For reasons explained in a moment, turn on "Send permission emails to," and plug in your own email address

Now then: When your youngster uses Apple's Mail program to send a message to

someone who's not on the approved list, or tries to iChat with someone not on the list, he gets the message shown at top in Figure 12-8 If he clicks Ask Permission, then your copy of Mail shortly receives a permission-request message (Figure 12-8, middle);

meanwhile, the outgoing message gets placed in limbo in his Drafts folder

If you add that person's address to the list of approved correspondents, then the next time your young apprentice clicks the quarantined outgoing message in his Drafts folder, the banner across the top lets him know that all is well—and the message is OK to go out (Figure 12-8, bottom)

POWER USERS' CLINIC Parental Remote Controls

It occurred to somebody at Apple that the new Parental Controls feature might

be especially useful in a classroom That person further realized that it'd be very cool if you could adjust the settings for Macs A, B, C, and D while seated at

Mac E That is, the teacher might prefer not to have to scurry from kid's desk to kid's desk to make changes

And that's why you can operate Parental Controls from another Mac on the

same network

Phase 1: While seated at the first kid's Mac, open System Preferences; open

Parental Controls; click the ; enter your password

Now click the name of the account you want to manage remotely Then, from

the menu below the list of accounts, choose Allow Remote Setup Close

System Preferences Repeat for each account on each Mac that you'll want to

manage from afar

Phase 2: Go back to your teacher's desk On your own Mac, choose Go

Connect To Server In the resulting dialog box, click Browse

Now you get a list of the other Macs on the network Click one and enter an

administrator's name and password for that Mac

Now open System Preferences, click Parental Controls, click the , and then enter your password again This time, you'll see a section in the Accounts list

called Other Computers Click the account name (on the kid's Mac) whose

settings you want to change Enter the administrator name and password of the

remote computer one more time, and off you go!

Note: This feature doesn't attempt to stop email or chat using other programs, like

Microsoft Entourage or Skype If you're worried about your efforts being bypassed, block access to those programs using the Forbidden Applications list described above

Figure 12-8 Top: If your kid tries to contact someone who's not on the Approved

list, he can either give up or click Ask Permission

Bottom: In the latter case, you'll know about it If you're convinced that the

would-be correspondent is not, in fact, a stalker, you can grant permission by clicking

Always Allow

Your young ward gets the good news the next time he visits his Drafts folder, where

the message has been awaiting word from you, the Good Parent

When your underling fires up iChat or Mail, she'll discover that her Buddy List is empty except for the people you've identified

Handling the teenage hissy fit is your problem

12.3.4 Time Limits

Clever folks, those Apple programmers They must have kids of their own

They realize that some parents care about how much time their kids spending front of the Mac, and some also care about which hours (Figure 12-9):

• How much time In the "Weekday time limits" section, turnon "Limit computer

use to," and then adjust the slider A similar slider appears for Weekend time limits

• Which hours In the "Bedtime" section, turn on the checkbox for either "School

nights" or "Weekend," and then set the hours of the day (or, rather, night) when the Mac is unavailable to your young account holders

In other words, this feature may have the smallest pages-to-significance ratio in this entire book Doesn't take long to explain it, but it could bring the parents of Mac addicts a lot of peace

12.3.5 Logs

The final tab of the Parental Controls panel is Big Brother Central Here's a complete rundown of what your kids have been up to Its four categories—Websites visited,

Websites blocked, Applications, and iChat—are extremely detailed For example, in Applications, you can see exactly which programs your kids tried to use when, and how much time they spent in each one Figure 12-10 shows the idea

Figure 12-9 Top: If this account holder tries to log in outside of the time limits you specify here, she'll encounter only a box that says, "Computer time limits expired." She'll be offered a pop-up menu that grants her additional time, from 15 minutes to

"Rest of the day"—but it requires your parental consent (actually, your parental

password) to activate

Bottom: Similarly, if she's using the Mac as her time winds down, she gets this message Once again, you, the allknowing administrator, can grant her more time

using this dialog box

If you see something that you really think should be off limits—a site in the Websites Visited list, an application, an iChat session with someone—click its name and then click Restrict You've just nipped that one in the bud

Conversely, if the Mac blocked a Web site that you think is really OK, click its name in the list, and then click Allow (And if you're wondering what a certain Web page is, click

it and then click Open.)

Figure 12-10 These logs track everything your kid tried to do; it's spying, sure, but it's for the good of the child (Right?) Use the popup menus at the top to change the time period being reported (Today, This Week, or whatever) and how they're

grouped in the list—by date or by application/Web site