How to create and limit a user account

Protecting your computer from malicious software is extremely difficult if you have curious tech-savvy children who will install everything that they find on the internet on your computer. This could lead to serious security issues on your system. The best way to prevent this is to create new user accounts for your children and set up parental controls on them to stop them from putting the system at risk.

How to create and limit a user account

The first step is to create a new user account. In order to accomplish this it is required to go to Control Panel and the to the User Accounts section, which will display you the user accounts management interface. Here you will have the option of creating a new user account. When creating the new account, set the username to your child’s name and allow the child to choose his or her own password. Save the settings you want to the account and set up file sharing if you wish. Make sure that the child’s account is NOT given administrator privileges. The wizard for the process of account creation is self-explanatory, so you should have no problem.

Now whenever the child tries to install new software on the system, they will be asked to provide the administrator password, which should be known only to you. The child will not be able to install any software without your supervision. Therefore, you will be able to stop your children from installing rogue software on your computer.

The example provided is indicating the usability of a child account that should be limited in order to ensure proper system security. However, the application of this procedure has many domains of use since in most cases it is a good idea to limit even oneself as the main user of the computer, in order to avoid making mistakes that can otherwise be prevented by not using the administrator account all the time.

Once a good user policy has been enabled it is recommended to change the password of the accounts that are active on the system once every 90 days in order to make sure that any security flaw dealing with access credentials is neutralized by a periodic password reset.

Tags: Control Panel, malicious software, Protecting your computer, system security