In the course of my playing with your program, I have discovered that, provided the monitored account is an admin, that account can create a new account that is not monitored by the Safety Minder program. This becomes an issue when the PC being monitored is "owned" by the child being monitored (Though I suppose they could just backup their stuff and reformat if they wanted), and they have access to those accounts.
In a shorter description, admin accounts that are monitored can be used to simply create a new account that is not limited or restricted by the Safety Minder software.
I cannot be sure if this works in any OS other than Windows Vista Home Premium (Service Pack 1, 6.0, build 6001).
Please note that every Windows account you want to monitor should be assigned specifically to a child profile from your Web Portal (https://onlinefamily.norton.com). New Windows accounts do not get monitored by default. Once a Windows account is created on child's PC, it gets reported automatically to Web Portal but you need to assign it to the child profile to make it a monitored account. You can assign a Windows account to a child profile either from Web Portal or, from the child's PC:
To assign a Windows account to a child profile from Web Portal:
1. Login to Web Portal
2. Go to child's Profile Settings
3. Under the child's PC icon, check the Windows user account box
4. Click Update Settings
To assign a Windows account to a child profile from child's PC:
1. Right-click System Tray icon of Norton Safety Minder
2. Click Edit Accounts
3. Provide your OnlineFamily.Norton account's email and password when prompted.
I understand that your concern is that kids can bypass the safety minder and create a new account thereby can go the internet unmonitored/unsecured.
If the kid say for instance creates a new windows account and does not use the accoun that is being monitored(or formats the PC). two things would happen
1. The safety minder would throw a red alert in the activity page if the tool did not report any activity to the server for a significant amount of time
2. adding to that alert the newly created account would get reported to the webportal as specified by Syed (if the kid hasnt formatted the disk), so that the parent can still go ahead and map the profiles.
by this way the parent gets to know what ever is happenning
I understand your description of the flags that would be raised if a new, unmonitored account appeared on the computer. However, I know of at least one circumstance where this would not be detected.
I worked an issue with Ilya and others concerning Active Directory domain connected computers. On those computers, accounts are not automatically detected. As a workaround for now, domain accounts we wish to have monitored must be added to the local USERS group. So any new Domain accounts will not automatically be recognized by Online Family. I know this may be a narrow circumstance but like I said it is just one that I can think of off the top of my head.
To Utanith's concern, perhaps your team should consider some other default behavior for any login that is not assigned to be monitored. For example, automatically assign ANY new login on a monitored computer to a default profile. In this way, once the system is being monitored any login is monitored and it is up to the parent to specifically unassign it if they choose.
This is a reverse from the approach you are currently using which is to not monitor by default. It would seem safer to monitor by default and allow the parent to ease the restrictions as appropriate.
The previous poster had the issues with admin accounts. I don't have this issue as my users are not admins but I do have the issue where Active Directory accounts are not recognized.
Anyway, the focus of MY post was that any new account (standard or admin) added to the computer default to NOT monitored. I think you correctly picked up that this was the issue I was raising. It would seem a better approach to have all new accounts default to monitored and required the parent to lessen the restrictions.
As I read down this thread I could see an argument for both sides of how to deal with new accounts. Perhaps this could be a new option which could be adjustable in the Settings area so that it pushes down as part of the policy updates.