Microsoft’s Family Safety Enters Public Beta

After a period of internal beta testing, Microsoft today released the Family Safety service to public beta. At the same time, Microsoft announced plans to move Family Safety into the OneCare brand, along with the free Safety Scanner and OneCare Advisor toolbar.

Microsoft has worked with outside experts such as the American Academy of Pediatricians to define just what categories of content are appropriate for children of different ages.

Besides allowing or blocking each category, you can set the product to “warning mode”. In this mode it warns that the requested page may be inappropriate, but lets the user choose whether to visit it anyway. This warning mode can be useful even for administrators, to avoid visiting porn sites accidentally by mistyping a URL. For very young children you can restrict access to a user-defined list of allowed sites or use a Microsoft-defined list of kid-oriented sites.

If Family Safety blocks a page your child thinks is valid, she can click a simple link to request permission. A parent at home can grant permission “over the shoulder” by typing the administrator password. Otherwise Family Safety notifies each administrator of the request via e-mail. On receiving the notification at work or around the world you simply log on, click a link, and allow or deny the request. You can also view a log of each child’s surfing history, including whether each site was allowed or blocked. And you can quickly change any logged site to allow or block it.