Patent Application
20080201380
In general, the present invention relates to computer software and computer communication networks and, in particular, to a system and method for aggregating and extending parental controls auditing in an unmanaged computer network.
Parental control systems for computers and television have become increasingly popular as more and more homes have access to the Internet and extensive cable or satellite television offerings. With respect to computers and Internet usage, parents especially want to know what their children are doing when they use the computer, including the web sites they visit and the individuals with whom they are communicating.
Some applications, such as those provided by Internet service providers MSN and America Online (AOL), provide parental controls, but they are limited to restricting and auditing usage of features inside the application. Another problem with existing parental controls solutions is that the parents receive fragmented audit reports when their children use multiple computers located throughout the home. For example, if a child uses a computer in the kitchen and then a computer in his room, the parent will get two reports that he or she will have to cross reference manually. In the multiple-computer household, children might attempt to circumvent parental controls by purposefully using different computers to get more time on the computer than allowed, or to use a computer having a program (or unrestricted access to the Internet) that is not available on their own computer. Efforts to maintain such information in a centralized server outside of the home but accessible to the parents raises privacy issues that makes such a solution undesirable.
Connecting the household computers to a home network might offer parents some additional control, such as providing a single point of access to the Internet from which certain computers in the home may be disconnected from time to time. But unlike a managed computing network environment, common to business and other large-scale computing networks, the typical home network is an unmanaged network that offers parents little in the way of control. For example, a home network does not typically incorporate a primary domain controller for regulating user access or centralized data file storage. Instead, many unmanaged computing networks require individual user management in terms of regulating user security authorization to use the various computing devices on the network. Further, most unmanaged networks require additional user participation and knowledge to store, recall and synchronize content stored on the various computing devices on the network. As a consequence, the home network offers few benefits in terms of parental control, since existing parental control solutions in a home network are constrained by the network's limitations to operate independently on each computing device, just the same as if the device were not on the network. Moreover, the home network may also introduce other problems, such as providing the children access to unprotected files on the parents' computer, such as the parents' financial or other personal files, e.g. Microsoft Money, etc.
Another problem with existing parental control systems today is that third party applications using a proprietary parental control system are forced to log events so that they conform to the style dictated by the proprietary system's auditing schema. Since not all applications that the parents install on their computers will conform to the proprietary auditing schema, there may be gaps in the audit reports generated by the parent control system. Parents are, therefore, unable to get the full picture of their children's computer usage. For example, parents may not be aware of which games, movies, or other activities their children are involved in using computers in the home.
A system and method for aggregating and extending parental controls auditing in an unmanaged computing network are provided. A parental control system, including a parental control database, logging interface, and audit process, resides on each host computing device in an unmanaged computing network that is capable of synchronizing data residing on one of the host computing devices with data residing on the other devices in the network. The parental control system facilitates the logging of parental control audit information associated with a unique user identifier of a restricted user, e.g., a particular child's user account, in a manner that is extensible and customizable by the applications from which the parent control audit information originates. The parental control system further facilitates the reporting of the audit information in a manner that allows parents to aggregate the audit information to obtain a comprehensive audit report of their children's use of all computers in the home.
In accordance with an aspect of the present invention, the logging interface permits applications, including any services running on any host computing device in the network, to log parental control audit information to a resident copy of the parental control database using a universal schema. The parental control audit information may include any information associated with the unique user identifier that may be of interest to a parent that is recorded, collected, or otherwise generated by an application or service activated or otherwise used by the uniquely identified user on any device in the network. The universal schema may be any data representation format that facilitates universal access to the logged parental control audit information, such as the Extensible Markup Language (XML). During operation, each resident copy of the parental control database is synchronized with each other copy of the database residing on the other host computing devices in the network.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, the audit process receives a request from a parent for an aggregated view of the content of the parental control database corresponding to a set of criteria, such as for a particular child, a particular period of time, or for a particular application or service. Periodically, or in response to the parent's request, the audit process generates an audit report containing an aggregated view of the content from the resident copy of the synchronized parental control database.
In accordance with one aspect of the present invention, the logging interface further permits applications and services to provide a customizable style that controls what audit information is logged to the resident copy of the parental control database and how that logged information should be displayed or presented during the audit process. The customizable styles may be in any universally recognized format for transforming and presenting data such as the Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) language. The customizable styles are stored in a resident copy of a custom log styles database in a host computing device on the network. Similar to the parental control database, each resident copy of the custom log styles database is synchronized with each other copy of the custom log styles database residing on the other host computing devices in the network. In operation, the audit process generates the audit report from the resident copies of both the synchronized parental control database and synchronized custom log styles database. The parental control database contains the actual parental control audit information that was logged by the applications or services, and the custom log styles database contains the style data that controls how the information is presented in the audit report to a parent or child end user.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention, the parental control system further includes a notification process in which a parent or child is notified that the parental control system has been activated and whether there is available any logged parental control audit information in the parental control database from which to generate an audit report. The notification process may operate periodically as a reminder to parents to check their children's computer usage, or continuously in real-time in response to detecting that an application or service is logging parental control audit information to the parental control database, or notify a user that parental control auditing has commenced or terminated.
In accordance with yet another aspect of the present invention, the audit process generates an audit report from the point of view of the parent or the child, i.e., the restricted user whose computer usage is being audited. The audit process further generates a summary audit report or a detail report, and may be dynamically altered to generate a summary or detailed report in response to a user input. The audit process may further generate a report of the parental control settings for a particular child as received via a parent input to the system.
In accordance with yet other aspects of the present invention, a computer-accessible medium for aggregating and extending parental controls auditing in an unmanaged computing network is provided. The computer-accessible medium comprises data structures and computer-executable components comprising a parental control system and method, including a parental control database, custom log styles database, logging interface, and audit process for permitting applications and services to log parental control audit information for a computer user in a manner that is extensible and customizable by the application, as well as in a manner that may be aggregated for presenting a comprehensive audit report of the user's computer usage. The data structures define parental control audit information, logging interfaces, and audit reports in a manner that is generally consistent with the above-described system and method. Likewise, the computer-executable components are capable of performing actions generally consistent with the above-described system and method.
The foregoing aspects and many of the attendant advantages of this invention will become more readily appreciated as the same become better understood by reference to the following detailed description, when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein:
Generally described, the present invention corresponds to a system and method for aggregating and extending parental controls auditing in an unmanaged computing network. More specifically, the present invention corresponds to a system and method for facilitating the logging of parental control audit information associated with a unique user identifier, i.e. a particular child's user account, in a manner that is extensible and customizable by the applications from which the parental control audit information originates. The system and method further facilitates the reporting of the audit information in a manner that allows parents to aggregate the audit information to obtain a comprehensive audit report of their children's use of all computers in the home, i.e., all computing devices in the unmanaged network. In the discussion that follows, the term “parent” is generally used to describe the administrative, or unrestricted user, and the term “child” is generally used to describe a restricted user, i.e., any user upon whom a restriction has been placed by an administrator. Although the present invention will be described with regard to an unmanaged network in which all the network computing devices have common security profiles for all authorized users of the network, one skilled in the relevant art will appreciate that the present invention may be implement in alternative unmanaged networks in which each computing device may maintain separate security profiles for authorized network users. Further, one skilled in the relevant art will appreciate that some or all of the aspects of the present invention may be practiced in managed computer networks.
In addition, while the computing system will be described in the general context of a personal computer usable in a distributed computing environment, where complementary tasks are performed by remote computing devices linked together through a communication network, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the invention may be practiced with many other computer system configurations, including multiprocessor systems, minicomputers, mainframe computers, and the like. In addition to the more conventional computer systems described above, those skilled in the art will recognize that the invention may be practiced on other computing devices including laptop computers, tablet computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and other devices upon which computer software or other digital content is installed. Moreover, while aspects of the invention may be described in terms of applications and interfaces executed by an operating system in conjunction with a personal computer, those skilled in the art will recognize that those aspects also may be implemented in combination with other program modules or subsystems, such as a security subsystem of the operating system. Generally, program modules include routines, programs, subprograms, subroutines, interfaces, components, data structures, etc., that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types.
For the sake of convenience, much of the description herein is provided in the context of the Microsoft Windows operating system and associated security subsystem. In particular, although the description of the computing system suitable for implementing various features of the invention will include references to the Windows operating system and security subsystem, those skilled in the art will recognize that the invention may be practiced in the context of other operating systems and security subsystems.
In view of the foregoing, the embodiments described with regard to the present invention are illustrative in nature and should not be construed as limiting.
As illustrated in
The custom log style data 306 provides the third party applications 202 with the option to extend and customize the audit reporting available to the parent using the parental control system 110. In this way a third party application may control what information is logged to the parental control database 208, and how it is reported to the parent (or child). For example, if the parent installs a third party digital video disc player (DVD) on the family computer, the DVD application might log the titles of all of the DVD movies that her child watches on the computer. When the parental control audit report is later obtained by the parent, it will list not only all of the movie titles that the child watched, but also the Motion Picture Association (MPAA) ratings, objectionable content assessments (e.g., violence, nudity), and the cast. The audit information logged by the DVD application may be specified using a universally accessible schema, such as XML. The custom log data 206 may include the universally accessible log schema as well as a style guide, such as an XSL style sheet. The custom XML schema contains the format of an XML document (e.g., Title, MPAA rating, Content, Cast), and the XSL style sheet is a file that describes how to display an XML document of a given type.
For example, in one embodiment, during application installation and setup, the application 202 will register an XML schema with the parental control system 110 that contains the format of the data describing the custom audit events that the application intends to log along with a custom report XSL style sheet for each report the application 202 wants to provide to the user. The registered XML schema and XSL style sheet are stored on the custom log styles database 308. During operation, the application 202 uses the parental control logging API 206 and custom logging event processor 302 to log application-originated data 304 about the event in the parental control database 208 in accordance with the XML schema. Subsequently, the parental control audit process 210 accesses the custom log styles database 308 to retrieve the XML schema and XSL style sheet to determine how to present the logged data to the parent-user when generating the parental control audit report 212 and/or parental control audit notification 214.
It is understood that the parental control database 208 and custom log styles database 308 are shown as separate data repositories for the sake of illustration, and that the data they represent may be stored using other means. For example, as described in the next two figures,
The parental control audit process 210 further comprises a parental control hub 602, which is a user interface that is provided to a parent user for purposes of aiding in the navigation to a parental control audit detail report 608, or a parental control audit summary report 610. An example of the parental control detail report 608 is described in further detail in
In a preferred embodiment, the aggregated information that is used to generate the audit detail report 608, 614 is obtained from the parental control databases 208 (and custom log style database 308) residing on all of the computer devices in the network, through merging and replicating the data contained in the databases 208, 308 and conducting a local query to the resident databases as will be described in further detail in
The parental control audit summary 610 generally contains summary information obtained from the parental control databases 208 (and custom log style database 308) for one or more restricted users, or for one or more applications 202 accessible by restricted users. For example the parent might request the auditing process 210 to produce a summary report 610 of the total number of logon hours, internet hours, etc. for all of her children before requesting a report showing the detailed information for a particular child.
The parental control audit process 210 may further generate a parental control audit detail report 606 from the perspective of the child, or restricted user. That is, the child may submit a request to the parental control audit process 210 to generate a report similar to what is provided to the parent, detailing his or her usage on the home network. In this way, the child can, to a certain extent, self-monitor their usage, and alter their behavior accordingly in an effort to comply with the restrictions placed on them by their parents. The reports 606 from the child's perspective are generally read-only, and may include a report of the settings 616, i.e. the restrictions, currently in place for him or her, as well as the full detail 618 of their computer usage.
In operation, at processing block 708, the parental control audit process 210 is activated to control audit reporting an all of the devices in the network to which the identified user account has access. Once activated, at processing block 710, the parental control audit process 210 generates the appropriate notifications to the parent and child users, to notify them of the commencement or termination of a parental control audit, and/or the availability of parental control audit information.
Processing continues at process block 804, where the parental control audit process 210 generates a parental control audit notification 214 to the parent-user and/or child-user notifying them that parental control auditing has commenced or terminated, as the case may be, or that specific audit information 204 has been logged and is available for reporting. In one embodiment, the notification 214 is generated automatically on a periodic basis to remind the parent that a new audit report is ready for the parent to review. In this way, the notification 214 aids parents in remaining vigilant in enforcing restrictions on their children's use of the computer. Of course, the described notifications 214 are for the sake of illustration only, and other types of relevant notifications 214 may be generated for the parents and children users affected by the parental control audit process 210 without departing from the scope of the claims that follow.
At processing block 806, the parental control system 110 continues in one embodiment to aggregate the audit information 204 logged in the parental control database 208 (and custom log styles database 308) by periodically, continuously, or on demand, merging and replicating the data contained in the databases 208, 308 with the corresponding databases on every computer device in the network, as will be described in further detail in
At processing block 808, the parental control audit process 210 receives a request from a parent user (or child user, as the case may be) to view information available in the parental control database. In one embodiment the request may be in the form of a query that contains a set of criteria to apply against the parental control database 208 to match all content in which the parent or child user, identified by a user SID security token, can access. Additionally, the query can include any number of additional criteria input by a parent-administrator or child-user, such as specific user SIDs of restricted users, specific applications, date ranges, etc. that can be used to match the audit information contained in the database. One skilled in the relevant art will appreciate that some or all portions of the query string, such as the user SID, may be entered automatically without requiring additional user input. Alternatively, some portion of the query string, such as the additional search criteria, may be specified by user at the time the request is made, or may be pre-determined as part of a configuration of the computing device in the network from which the request is made.
In response to the request, the parental control audit process 210 obtains the aggregated data as described with reference to processing block 806, and determines at decision block 810 whether the user wishes to view the parental control settings 216 that are currently in place to restrict one or more users, or whether they wish to view a detail or summary audit report of the audit information currently available.
At processing block 812, the parental control audit process 210 generates a view of the requested audit settings for all of the restricted users, or a particular restricted user, in accordance with the request received in processing block 808. At processing block 814, the parental control audit process 210 generates a view of the requested audit report for all of the restricted users, or a particular restricted user, in accordance with the request received in processing block 808. When the request has been received from a restricted user, i.e., a child, then the audit settings or report is generated from their perspective as appropriate.
The email section at 1108 entitled “Toby exchanged email messages with:” is followed by a scrollable listing of the individuals with whom Toby exchanged emails, including the individual's email address, and the total number of emails and replies that were sent. Likewise, the instant messages section 1110 entitled “Toby exchanged Windows instant messages with:” is followed by a scrollable listing of the individuals with whom Toby exchanged instant messages, including the individual's email address, and the total number of conversations that were conducted.
The web site section 1112 entitled “Toby visited these web sites:” is followed by a scrollable listing of the name/URL of the web site that was visited and the number of times that it was visited. Additional information, such as whether the site was blocked may be listed as well. The game section 1114 entitled “Toby played these games:” is followed by a scrollable listing of the names of the games that Toby played, the total number of times the game was played, and the duration of play. The application section 1116 entitled “Toby used these programs:” is followed by a scrollable listing of the names of the programs that Toby used, the total number of times the program was used, and the duration of use. Of course, the information shown in each section described above is for purposes of illustration only. The selection of which information to show and in what order may vary from one section to the next, and, in the case of applications taking advantage of the extensibility offered by the parental control system 110, may even be controlled by the application 202 from which the information originated via the use of the custom logging information stored in the custom log styles database 308, e.g. the XML schema and XSL style sheets that describe what audit information is to be reported and how.
Additional interactive buttons to facilitate the use of the audit report, such as the Save button 1118, the Print button 1120, and the Close button 1122 may be provided. For example, the Save button 1118 may be used by the parent (or child) to save the audit report 1102 for archival purposes. Of course it is understood that the illustrated audit report 1102 is depicted by way of example only, and that numerous other designs in presenting the auditing information 204 in the report 1102 may be employed without departing from the scope of the claims that follow.
While the presently preferred embodiments of the invention have been illustrated and described, it will be appreciated that various changes may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. For example, in one embodiment of the present invention, the various components of the parental control system 110 and, in particular, the functionality of the parental control audit process 210 and custom logging event process 302, as described above, may be implemented in different combinations of processes, programs, or interfaces, and may be distributed across one or more computing devices in the unmanaged network.
This application is a divisional of U.S. application Ser. No. 10/823,277, filed Apr. 13, 2004, which application is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | 10823277 | Apr 2004 | US |
| Child | 12108317 | US |
