Family Safety Management Online Portal

Safety on the internet is a challenging scenario.

Our families are more connected than ever before and parents/guardians need to decide how closely they will monitor their children's activities on both PCs and mobile devices.

I have been part of many conversations on this subject and it can be quite polarizing. Amazingly there are some who believe their kids should have total freedom to do as they please on the internet while others want to lay down total control.  I suspect a majority of people are somewhere in the middle.

Microsoft first introduced Family Safety tools back in Windows Vista and Windows 7. The program was appropriately called Family Safety and it was and still is integrated as part of Windows Essentials. Microsoft also provided a companion website for retrieving activity reports for the computers that were running the Family Safety software.

In Windows 8.1 and now in Windows 10 that functionality has been moved to the cloud and the Family Safety portal which is available on your Microsoft Account page at account.microsoft.com/family.

The capabilities of Family Safety have also expanded to include areas that can be of concern in this day and age including the types, ratings of apps they can access and how much your child can spend in the Windows Store.

This gallery will introduce you to the Family Safety website, how to add your children's account to yours for tracking/management and the various tools that are available for your use with Family Safety.