The internet may be unwelcoming and dangerous to children who may not be old enough to understand their actions and the impact they may have. All parents are encouraged to monitor their children’s activities on the internet, while those activities are going on. This way any unfamiliar or inappropriate communications can be ended before they have the chance to become a problem.
Unfortunately for many, the opportunity to monitor our children every moment that they may need to use the computer may not be possible. Many children are accustomed to arriving home from school an hour or two before the adults begin to arrive from work. This means that your children could have that much time to get into a highly dangerous situation online. There is an answer to this problem.
- Install the TightVNC program to the computer you will be viewing, and controlling if necessary by executing the downloading package. Go through the setup wizard using the most proper settings and choices for your personal needs.
- You will then need to configure the TightVNC host by setting TightVNC to start as a system service. This will make certain that when you attempt to connect remotely, that TightVNC is active when you do, even if no one is currently at the computer.
- Configure the password for your TightVNC sessions. You can also take the time here to specific any particular additional settings you are interested in. You can enable loopback connections as well as set TightVNC to log session information in .vnc format.
Before you are done be sure your firewall is configured to accept connections made via TightVNC. Without setting this particular configuration option, everything else will be wasted time as you will not be able to connect in this manner without instructing the firewall to allow it. Port 5900 may be required for VNC traffic to flow correctly, however, it is always more desirable to personally test configurations and ports personally before selecting them indefinitely.
Monitoring Your Children
All parents should feel free to be open and honest with their children about monitoring their progress remotely. This can also work in their favor, as if they frequently have their own issues with managing the computer, you can actually assist them remotely using TightVNC as if you were at the computer yourself.
- To connect to a TightVNC host you will need to install and then double-click the program on your local system. A prompt when then appear asking for your connection details.
- Enter the VNC server address. This will be your host computers internet protocol, or IP address.
A box will appear asking for connection options. Select the preferred encoding, mouse and cursor control, display, and other miscellaneous options for your needs and click OK. The TightVNC will begin to connect to your host computer. Before it does it will prompt you to enter the password you set from the host. Enter the password, and you should now see the desktop of the host computer, idle, or in use.