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

Anonymous

Put simply, it's unacceptable.

For my child, why would I want to have to manage completely different sets of limits, curfew, blocked/allowed games, allowed ratings, etc for every device to which they log in?

This needs to go back to the old way where the child's account spanned all devices to which they've logged in.

Furthermore, when attempting to manage this new format, here's what I see in my Family Safety area:

How is this helpful at all? Nowhere on this screen do I know the device for which I'm altering the settings. If I click another instance of my child's name, I have no idea which device that is going to either.

I also have a sneaking suspicion this recent change is what is causing so many parents to have settings not taking effect, etc. They're probably altering the settings for the wrong device (because they have no clue where they're at in the system and I don't blame them) or the backend is simply doing things wrong.

Please fix this.

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99 answers

Anonymous

2015-04-22T14:02:00+00:00

I agree 100%. Please fix this!
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Anonymous

2015-04-22T15:42:19+00:00

100% agree. It is beyond me how anyone would consider this change an improvement. For years now every parental controls vendor out there, including Microsoft, has been promoting the ability of their solution to manage settings across multiple devices, including PCs, tablets, and even phones. MS has led the way in providing a stable, reliable, well-designed solution that integrates tightly with the OS without taking over key OS functions and creating instability and compatibility issues with other software.

This is a HUGE step backwards and possibly a deal killer for our family. I was about to suggest recently that it would be nice to have some common settings that apply to all children, but now you've got the opposite direction and made the settings not just per-child, but per-device. That's just crazy.
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Anonymous

2015-04-22T16:30:09+00:00

This is outrageous that they would do this.

They have basically disabled family safety on all the other devices allowing all my kids to view anything and everything.

And like you say, there is no way to know which device is which, this is a joke.

I really have no choice now but to find another solution and stop using family safety.
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Anonymous

2015-04-22T22:56:33+00:00

Well said, Brandon!

Microsoft, please roll back the change. You have just made Family Safety next to useless.
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Anonymous

2015-04-25T03:41:31+00:00

Yes, echo the sentiments above. The old Windows 8 implementation of family safety was my prime reason for installing windows 8 across all my families devices and buying new windows 8 tablets. Microsoft was the shining light in allowing parents to control access to technology in the house, and now it appears they're walking away from it and adopting apple and android device centric management.

What a disappointment !!! Was looking forward to the day you added proper control of Ms phones to the list and would have swung my children over to those away from apple and android.

I have one daughter I can manage without this technology, one daughter I cannot. She switches accounts, computers and does whatever she can to fight to stay online far longer than she should. We have media centres, pcs, laptops, a surface tablet and an Asus tablet, and have felt confident to this point putting my children accounts on all of the them. Now I'm faced with a page which is unmanageable from a tablet or phone because of its layout, and no idea which account is for which device. And getting separate emails for each device for each child, no idea from the emaí which device its from. Absolutely lost confidence in MS going forward if they could allow something like this out into the wild.

So I now have no reason to continue buying or recommending MS devices to other families or my daughters school. Forced to go with the flow of apple and android devices and leave MS to do their thing, whatever that may be.

Angry and disappointed.
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