I have a friend who's kid is a video game junkie. The parent wants to ensure his kid isn't up at 5am playing video games on a school night, but doesn't want to have to take away his computer or anything like that.

What are some ways to restrict access based on time of day? My first thought was a task/script to shutdown the computer at a certain time on weeknights, and logon restrictions during the wee hours, but I'm sure the kid would be able to get around that...

Is a 3rd party software package the only way to do this? If so does anyone have any recommendations?

2/23/2010 11:40:01 AM

Isn't there a Windows 7 commercial that shows this functionality built in?

edit: http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/09/7-things-to-like-about-parental-controls-in-windows-7/

[Edited on February 23, 2010 at 11:44 AM. Reason : .]

2/23/2010 11:42:30 AM

a lot of popular wireless routers have the functionality to restrict internet as well in addition to ^

[Edited on February 23, 2010 at 11:50 AM. Reason : ]

[Edited on February 23, 2010 at 11:51 AM. Reason : ]

2/23/2010 11:49:41 AM

Put on a boot password and tell the parent to keep it to themselves so that the kid can't use the computer without their permission.

2/23/2010 12:20:39 PM

that takes a whole 5 seconds to move one jumper to override. pretty sure the kid will figure that one out if he's over 6 years old

i agree that restricting ALL internet access after a certain time is a good bet..although doing a real reset of the router is going to erase all of those settings and be pretty useless anyways. might be prudent to put the router/modem somewhere the kid can't get to it if he really wants to get strict about it.

[Edited on February 23, 2010 at 12:45 PM. Reason : and i'm sure there are software solutions too, but i dunno]

2/23/2010 12:44:15 PM

need to teach that kid some time-management skills. Cutting off teh computer isn't going to help, he going to stay up all night masturbating and playing w legos or whatever. Don't try to harass and punish or he going to start sneaking out at night. let me guess, he not have a strong father figure. Kid need to do some hard rewarding work EVERY DAY after school so he too tired to even want to fuck off on the computer. Parents probably just sit in front of the TV all afternoon and evening right? That shit got to end, need a family hobby. Suburban life has no soul, it aint going to be easy. In the short term, If u put teh computer in ur bedroom he going to have to get off it when u go to bed, but like I said, that isn't going to help.

2/23/2010 12:48:49 PM

jcgolden why are you posting like you urban

2/23/2010 12:50:53 PM

Hit teh circuit breaker! no argument game over, lol

2/23/2010 12:51:10 PM

Quote :

"Isn't there a Windows 7 commercial that shows this functionality built in?"

Yes, and short of knowing the admin password, there is no way a kid is going to get around it.

2/23/2010 12:54:33 PM

keyloggers FTW

2/23/2010 12:56:42 PM

logjammers FTW

2/23/2010 12:57:13 PM

FroshKiller why are you posting like you l33t

2/23/2010 1:00:42 PM

hands up who copped a charge for felonious hackery of a government computer

2/23/2010 1:02:28 PM

The truly 1337 don't get caught.

2/23/2010 1:09:00 PM

lol, yea right. it take 1 day to go online and figure out how to get around it, parental control is just a marketing gimick. u not respecting the motivation a gamer going to have to get his fix. cut the cables, he going to learn how to splice them back together. Throw the circuit breaker he going to run a extension cord to the neighbors. Put it in ur room, u going to wake up one morning and he going to be in ur room playing w a blanket over the monitor and his head. Block the software, he going to make a 2nd partition on teh hard drive. Get rid of teh puter he going to get his old nintendo out the attic. If the rest of his world is boring, stressful, and un-rewarding; that kid is going to game. If u have any brains at all, school is boring as fuck and their factory-floor rules inspire rebellion.

2/23/2010 1:10:34 PM

Low-tech: take the plug away

2/23/2010 1:10:47 PM

this is how you guys can tell you're getting old - you're throwing out stupid ideas that can be circumvented in about 30s flat.

and you think they're good ideas.

2/23/2010 1:12:33 PM

Low-tech: plugs are cheap, keep a few hidden to replace that which was taken away

2/23/2010 1:13:47 PM

^^^^what the fuck is that shit. learn to type in english.

2/23/2010 1:15:08 PM

I think the easiest thing to do would be to just review the router logs. Go ahead and accept that you can't STOP the kid from playing and just bust him for it later. Don't tell him how you know... Divert his attention. Tell him you could hear it or something like that.

If you don't get an email from your router one day then you'll know he F-ed with it and you can bust him for that.

If there's another wireless signal on the premises, then just give up all hope.


[Edited on February 23, 2010 at 1:17 PM. Reason : s]

2/23/2010 1:16:19 PM

DDWRT, Tomato, or pfSense?

2/23/2010 1:27:54 PM

dp

[Edited on February 23, 2010 at 1:54 PM. Reason : s]

2/23/2010 1:53:59 PM

well, like I said, if the kid tries anything like that, it will very likely interrupt the logs or change their formatting... should be easy to detect

remember, ideally, the kid doesn't even know you're watching the router logs so he won't be as careful as he could be.

2/23/2010 1:54:22 PM

let's become network administrators rather than better parents

2/23/2010 1:59:09 PM

You can disable the reset button on most 3rd party firmwares.

If my kid is sneaking around at 5am playing warcraft on the occasional school night, that's one thing. If he's resetting my router to try to bypass these restrictions then perhaps it's time to look at a less "Now now Tommy, please do what mommy and daddy tell you, or else you might not get your chocolate milk and MAYBE even 2 minutes of time-out" approach.

2/23/2010 2:01:59 PM

maybe if your kid is awesome enough to have his way with your home router

you should encourage it

2/23/2010 2:02:35 PM

hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

That's why I said, you shouldn't try to keep him away from anything, but its a good idea to keep your finger on the pulse of his online activity. With the added benefit that if he does start doing shady crap like hacking the router, you'll be immediately aware of this.

2/23/2010 2:11:58 PM

teach him how to have safe sex early and he won't be on the computer all the time anyway

2/23/2010 2:12:40 PM

its too late for that, he's already a video game junkie

2/23/2010 2:14:31 PM

Vista and 7 have parental controls that are pretty nice. Restrict access to the PC based on time of day and week. I use that and K9 Blue Coat to make sure no porn sites pop up on my 6 year old. But the best way is to just keep the fucking computer in your living room so you can monitor their access. Mine is old enough that I can just send him to bed when its time. And he's not old enough that I'm worried about him trying to circumvent password protection, resetting the router, etc.

2/24/2010 3:10:21 PM

2/25/2010 7:51:54 AM

Quote :

"lol, yea right. it take 1 day to go online and figure out how to get around it, parental control is just a marketing gimick. u not respecting the motivation a gamer going to have to get his fix."

You obviously have zero fucking clue what you are talking about.

If you have an administrator account with a strong password, and your kid is on a limited user account, there aint SHIT he can do to circumvent it. Hell, if you REALLY want to lock it down, you can throw bitlocker on there, and put strong password protection on the bios.

There's no fucking way a tween is going to bypass that without it being blatantly obvious.

2/25/2010 1:18:16 PM

if they're using xp, you can do it in a command prompt with net user.

I think it's something like net user username /time days and times

I can't recall it exactly, but should be pretty easy to find.

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/net_user.mspx?mfr=true

[Edited on February 28, 2010 at 10:52 PM. Reason : link]

2/28/2010 10:51:19 PM

^^Hah, a strong admin password and a limited user account in Windows is worthless on its own

http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/

Of course, you're right, it is obvious if they use it since it blanks out the admin password. The right thing to do is teach the kid to do the right thing. But I won't get into a parenting discussion.

Edit: I realized you may have just been referring to circumventing the parental controls, in which case, you are correct.



[Edited on February 28, 2010 at 11:14 PM. Reason : .]

2/28/2010 11:12:02 PM

^turn on EFS, bitlocker, and password protect the bios. Disable alternate boot volumes/devices.

Even if they do manage to boot to the live cd, if the drive is bitlocked, you cant get to the sam files.

And even if you don't do any of that, the ntpasswd approaches BLANK the admin account password. Which means the next time the parent logs on to the machine, they will know their kid fucked with it. Which will get them in even deeper shit.

3/1/2010 12:37:47 AM

Quote :

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3/1/2010 12:48:24 AM