I need some serious help on this people. There is a friend of mine who is suspicious of her 10 and 12 year old being subjected to pornography on the home computer by their friends that come to their house time to time. I've been assigned with the task to do my best and weed out any proof that anything related to porn is being viewed on the home computer, a laptop. So, I need to figure out how to sort all this out, and what I should be looking for. Or, please supply me with further information on any programs availiable that would help me search the computer for such files or visited sites.

family safety

Windows live family safety is a good place to start. it block objectionable sites, tracks kids browsing sessions, and report to the parent via email. go here; https://fss.live.com/Default.aspx.

To view recent browsing history you can view temp internet files

IE

To view Temporary Internet Files (Temp files) in Internet Explorer 7.0:
• Click the Tools menu and select Internet Options.
• The Internet Options dialog window will appear.
• OPen the "General" tab.
• In the "Browsing history" area, click the "Settings..." button.
• In the "Temporary Internet Files and History Settings" window, click the "View Files..." button. The new window displays all of the Temporary Internet Files stored on the computer and their location on the local hard drive. The window also displays the URL each temporary file came from.

To view Temporary Internet Files (Temp files) in Internet Explorer 6.x/5.x:
• Click the Tools menu and select Internet Options.
• The Internet Options dialog window will appear.
• In the Temporary Internet Files section, click the "Settings..." button.
• In the "Settings" window, click the "View Files..." button. The new window displays all of the Temporary Internet Files stored on the computer and their location on the local hard drive. The window also displays the URL each temporary file came from.

Firefox

In the address bar type about:cache, then press enter.

Hi :

IF your friend's computer is a relatively new One having the Vista Operating
System, she should look into using the Info at
www.speakcomputers.com/Windows/Vista/ParentalControl.aspx .

However, IF her computer has an "earlier" Operating System, like Win XP,
Win 2000, etc, she should look into the FREE "ParentalControl Bar", developed
by a non-profit organization & available at www.parentalcontrolbar.org/ . There is
Info that this program MAY not work with "Browsers" ( used to go from website to
website ) such as Firefox 2.0 or later or "Opera" .

I prefer using a defacto "Parental Control" program, namely the FREE
"SpywareBlaster" from www.javacoolsoftware.com .

IE History view is excellent for this: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/iehv.zip
(For some reason the home site is not opening for me at the moment, but it should be found from Google searches elsewhere)

Also there's Mozilla Firefox History View too: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/mozilla_history_view.html

just any general key logging software will find out where those pesky kids have been
tho some are more user friendly than others

the history tools that Kimsland posted seem like a good idea tho as keylogging is a bit heavy and im not sure id like to find out 100% whats going on behind my back as ignorance is bliss lol and plus its about the whole trust thing and how to break the subject to your kid that "yea, we've been pretty much spying on you"... but it depends on the parent ethic really each to their own etc etc

Hope you find what your looking for and also get the whole issue cleared up

imho rather than logging and finding out what sites have been visited id try and use a site blocker instead coz then they wont ask any questions and they wont feel spied on just my 2p worth