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What is McAfee Security Center?

The Security Center on your computer desktop is part of your free Cox Security Suite Powered by McAfee®. It is a powerful security solution that allows you to monitor the security status on your computer and to know instantly whether  virus, spyware, email, and firewall protection services are up-to-date. 

How can it help me?

You can use this tool to set up and manage parental controls.

For additional help with any Security Center feature visit the McAfee Community. Click Home and Home Office, then under Communities on the left, click Security Center.

What are parental controls?

Before you can protect your children you must create an administrator password. The administrator is responsible for choosing protection settings and passwords for each child in the household. To create the administrator password you must log in to Windows using an Administrator or Limited user account. 

How can they help me?

Protection settings let you decide what your children can see and do online and allows you to monitor their online activity; the password ensures that only you can make changes to those settings.

To change a setting you must first enter the administrator password. After you protect your children with Parental Controls you can change or remove their user protection settings at any time. Below is a list of categories you can choose to prevent your children from accessing this content online:

To begin, double-click the McAfee Security Center icon in your task bar or on your desktop.

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Set a parental password

1. On the Security Center console under Features, expand Parental Controls.
2. Click Parental Controls: Set Up.

3. Next to Administrator Password click the Set button.

4. Under Enter Password, enter a password.
5. Under Re-Enter Password, enter the same password again.
6. Under Password Hint, enter some word that will help you remember your password.
7. Click the Next button.
8. When you see the pop-up box that says Administrator Password Saved, click OK.

All steps complete.

To change your password:

1. Next to Administrator Password click Change.
2. Enter your current password.
3. Enter the new password.
4. Re-enter the new password.
5. Enter a Password Hint.
6. Click Save.

All steps complete.

Tip: Users that appear in Parental Controls are the same Windows users already set up on your computer. If you want to add or remove a user, or change a user's account type, you can do so with the Windows User Accounts tool in the Windows Control Panel. You can quickly access this tool from the link in Parental Controls.

To  set up controls this way, you must close your McAfee software, then re-open it to see the user in Parental Controls. If you are a Windows XP Limited User, you cannot access the Windows User Accounts tool. Only Windows administrators can add, edit, or remove users in Windows XP.

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Set Up and Monitor Blocks

1. On the Security Center console, under Features, expand Parental Controls.
2. Click Parental Controls.
3. Next to Protect Your Family, click the Edit button.
4. Enter your administrator password.
5. Click Enter.
6. Click the user account you want to protect.
7. Click Required Settings.

7. Select the child's age range.
   Note: The categories are different for each age range.
8. Choose the content category in the Blocked list, then click the left arrow to move it into the Allowed list, as shown below.
9. Click Done.

All steps complete.

Block a specific website

If you have a particular website you want to block from this user, do the following:

1. Click Optional Settings.
2. Enter the web address in the field next to Website Address. 
3. Click Block.
4. Click Add.
5. Click Done.

All steps complete.

Limit Internet access times

You can use the online schedule to limit a child's online access to specific days and times.

If a child tries to go online during a restricted time, an alert from McAfee indicates that access is not allowed.  
Note: You must assign your child to an age group before you can create an online schedule.

1. Next to Protect Your Family click Edit.
   Enter your administrator password.
2. Click Next. 
3. Click the user you want to manage
4. Click Online Schedule.  

5. On the scheduling screen, put a check next one of the following:

   • Let my child go online at any time.
   • I want to choose when my child can go online.

If you choose the second option, click within the space next to the time you want to allow Internet access then repeat under the days you are going to allow access.
Note: You can also click the cell to undo your choices.

6. Click Done.  

All steps complete.

Monitor activities

Once your settings are in place you can regularly check to see if your children are trying to access blocked sites. To do this see the steps below:

1. On the Parental Controls window under Parental Controls Report, click View Reports.
2. In the Child drop-down menu choose the user you want to monitor.
3. In the When drop-down menu choose the time period you want to view. Your choices are Today, Yesterday or as far back as the last 365 days.
4.  After you make your choices you will see the following:
   • The last login for the user
   • The time the user spent online
   • If the user tried to access blocked websites
   • If the user tried to go online at restricted times

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Manage User Settings

Remove user protections:

1. On the Security Center console under Features expand Parental Controls.
2. Click Parental Controls.
3. Next to Protect Your Family click Edit.
4. Enter your administrator password.
5. Click Next.
6. Next to the user you no longer want to protect, click Unprotect.
   Note: You can change this setting at anytime to protect the user.
7. Click OK.

Safe Searching

Some search engines, like Google, Microsoft Bing, and Yahoo!, offer safe searching — a setting that stops potentially inappropriate content or links from showing up in a user's list of search results. These search engines usually let you choose how restrictive you want the safe searching filter to be, but also let you or any other user turn off safe searching at any time. With Parental Controls, safe searching is turned on by default for every user. However, you may want to turn this setting off for some  users.

To turn off Safe Searching:

1. Next to Protect Your Family, click the Edit button.
2. Click the user you want to change.
3. Click Optional Settings.
4. Uncheck the box next to Block websites that contain potentially inappropriate images or language from appearing in your child's search results.
5. Click Done.

All steps complete.