Security

Windows 7 Home Premium does not include file level encryption. This is limited to the more expensive (Professional and up) versions of Windows 7. While there are a number of freeware file encryption programs, I wanted one that worked as an Explorer extension for convenience and had both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. After looking around a bit, I discovered that Windows 7 and 64-bit support was still fairly rare. Fortunately, one of the better file encryption program, AxCrypt, had a beta version with Windows 7 and 64-bit support.

Many parents want some way to control their children's computer use: to help prevent them from accidentally (or purposely) accessing inappropriate sites, to prevent them from using the computer to play games when they should be using it to do their homework, etc. Most parental control software is not cheap, sometimes even requiring regular fees to keep it up to date and blocking the newest obviously inappropriate sites. Crawler Parental Control is freeware from the people who make Spyware Terminator.

I posted about Truecrypt back in 2006 on the old version of this blog. A few days ago, Truecrypt version 5.0 was released with a number of nice improvements, including the ability to encrypt the boot drive. From the announcement:

This thread on the Doom9 Forum is reporting that Fairuse4WM, a program that removes copy protection from purchased Windows Media files so they can be used on devices not approved my Microsoft, has been updated to work with Microsoft DRM up to version 11.0.6000.6324. While Microsoft apparently hates this program and it probably violates the DCMA, it restores ones ability to use one's music on the player of one's choice.

While nothing can replace parental supervision, a filtering program can help prevent stumbling across content unsuitable for your child. You can pay money for a content filter and often have little control over what it filters -- some commercial filters protect from political and religious sites that upset their corporate leaders as well as from p*rn, for example.

FoxFilter is a free content filter extension for the Firefox browser that you control.