Family safety: Feedback on recent changes to multi-device management

This just in from Norton about norton family safety on windows 10.  Assume other third party parental controls will have a similar issue, so be aware of this if upgrading to windows 10 to try the roaming profile.

Assume alternatives are to use third party for detailed  time and app management and ms for browsing security or disable edge / explorer and use chrome.

Wondering if it's possible to completely disable edge and/or explorer in windows 10 ? Not just talking about changing the default, but completely disabling it if have migrated to a third party parental control after recent ms family safety changes.

Sorry if the note comes out a bit large, pasting on phone, don't have a lot of control.

	Dear Valued Customer,<br><br><br>		<br>	---	<br><br><br>As a Norton Family user, we want you to know that Norton Family will work with Windows 10. However, there are a couple of things that you should know before you upgrade your operating system. <br><br> <br><br>To use Norton Family effectively on Windows 10, we don’t recommend enabling Windows Family Safety. Running both parental controls may impact the performance of your operating system.  <br><br> <br><br>Additionally, Norton Family cannot currently monitor activity on Microsoft® Edge, the new default browser for Windows 10. We expect to support the Edge browser later in 2015 when Microsoft begins allowing browser extensions. Until then, your child must use<br> another browser, such as Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox for Norton Family to monitor online activity.  <br><br> <br><br>If you are monitoring your child’s Web activity, Norton Family will notify you via email if your child uses Microsoft Edge. <br><br> <br><br>Need Norton Family help? Please contact Norton<br> Support.  <br><br> <br><br>Thank you for choosing Norton Family!<br><br><br>		<br>	---	<br><br><br>Sincerely,<br><br><br>		<br>	---	<br><br><br>–Your Norton Team	<br>	---

Thanks for letting me know the energy is spent in the correct place, but I'm still thinking I should have crashed the MS event my cousin worked last week ;) (Here, let me SHOW YOU why this doesn't work).

I do have the age set low, and I thought I had it low enough (and I thought I had it only set to allow what I allowed - am I imagining that setting? I'm not near her computer right now). But I was shocked to see she was once again in the app store and downloading games I had not allowed. 

She announced with great pleasure, "Hey Mommy, I finally got my Fresh Paint working", which I have no issue with - I just hadn't gotten around to allowing it. So I'm thinking, HOW did you get that working??? Then I got walloped with the kidney infection. 

So this area has been on my list to sort out this week.... maybe tomorrow. 

The block inappropriate websites isn't going to cut it, no way, no how. I have to do explicit - because there is nothing inappropriate with where she goes, it is the time she spends there without the ability to self-regulate, without the ability to filter and all of that. So despite trying to give her more freedom that matches her age (16, but cognitive is 10ish), it has been an utter failure and left me no choice but to block everything. Which has made it nasty around here this week.... she doesn't have the ability to understand my reasons. She just knows she had a free-for-all when I could get nothing working like it was supposed to before the drive crash, and now she cannot get those places. 

I still haven't given the other computer back to her sister, and I have their 7" Dell tablet hide because I don't think things are working like they are supposed on those. It is a nightmare, and I have no idea if I can even upgrade it to Win10 - having just gone thru a Win8 rebuild i'm not excited.

I will always be bitter for the lack of warning on the changes - I will forever believe that whatever the backend process was on that mucked up the local account and created my issue of nothing working. If I had known the changes ahead of time, I could have changed things to pre-empt the problems - but I wasn't given that ability.

I will forever remain sad at the taking of a world class solution, built in and FREE, to the current state we have. It just reminds me of too much that went on in the late 90's with various things with both MS and Apple. 

I am hoping that I can come up with a solution to stop access to the store. That would be huge  - again, I understand the marketing reasons behind it... again I resent that marketing takes precedence over kids safety. Because that is who is being hurt, the kids. 

Thank you for getting back to me today - i'm sure as i can dig into it again in the next couple of days I will have issues/questions and yes, frustrations. I just hope I can make it work for our family - I do not remain optimistic at this point.

Tracey

Thanks Tracey,

In terms of feedback, this is the channel, and your complaints have absolutely been heard.  The general upset/anger/frustration/outrage that has been expressed here and in other forums/blogs with regard to the change in how time limits work (removal of the blocks) and the delinking of profiles certainly made its way to the engineering teams.  And there are lots of really good suggestions for how to improve that have also been raised to engineering, as well. 

Based on what you said above, there are a couple of things that you might try to help your situation - at least on the download/play side.  I can't help with the time limit concern you've raised though, and as it is now, each non-Windows 10 device has to be managed separately, too. 

While we don't restrict (as in an on/off toggle) whether a child can download an app or game, you can still control what used by your daughter - at least reactively.  Have you tried these yet?

1. Apps and Games
   • Control what age level access your child has.  That setting is located on the Apps and Games tab.  Toggle the "block inappropriate apps and games" to on, and then below that, you can set the age (to the maturity level, not just calendar age).  In the case of special needs kiddos like mine, that setting might be lower than neurotypicals.
   • For those apps that do get downloaded, from the Recent Activity tab or from that same Apps and Games tab, you should be able to explicitly block any app that you feel isn't good for your daughter.
2. Websites
   • Set to block inappropriate websites.  Period.  If you want, you can do the white list approach, but as you already know, that is very time consuming to manage.
   • If there's a questionable site that gets through, you can block it from the Recent Activity page just like with the apps and games.

I hope you feel better soon - please take care. 

~jen

And at some point in the thread, or another one, I stated my daughters hard drive in the computer had crashed and so I was starting from scratch. Due to the stomach flu and food poisoning in my house, the computer just got up and running again last weekend.

but starting from scratch I had no choice but to limit her in ways I didn't like, because the set up as a new user failed to provide the features I used before - that has not changed.

the simple fact is, I could NOT get it to work before the crash, trying everything you suggested (which I had also tried the prior time to no avail). I had reached the point of having to delete her account and start over... The Seagate failure took care of that for me.

What the current problem is, the features that we used in our house are gone. So while her account is being controlled by family safety now.... It has caused huge resentment because I have had to scale it back.

so for me, there is no fix except apparently to buy 3rd party software.

i need to be able have blocks of time she can't use  it during the day, your suggestions to work around that are not feasible; I need to not allow downloads/installs, period.  I can't seem to block that now.

so what isn't working is the current incarnation of the thing as a whole... And no one seems to care about that. It was amazing and world class before.... And now it is not.

i apologize for the wonky formatting - your forums don't seem to be working on my iPad today. I cannot even get to the end of thee line below.

so for us, unless your "team" is willing to add back what they took away, I will continue to state it doesn't work. As for when it unlinked and failed before - it really was not fixable, just like the last time it happened to all 3 kids on 2 different devices, I had to start over with new accounts. I can't answer why on that, no one could. Maybe we should just blame Dell - all the devices that failed were theirs. 

So daily this week my daughter is aggressive with us because of the settings I had to use on her new account - eventually I will have time to rebuild her white list, and create yet another account to allow the "fun" pages outside of school time, but as I'm sitting here today after a trip to the ER for a kidney infection.... Well, what she has she has. 

If there is a feedback channel I can send feedback to on he the **** that is the new incarnation please share it. I'm just want that world class set-up back. Your users aren't stupid, we don't want it easier (obviously). How about a 2 tiered setting approach? Those that want simple can have it, the rest of us can dig in and make it useable for our families. Just don't ASSume that anyone in Redmond knows what is. Best for my family.... Leave that to me.

tracey