Email Clients Tutorials
Hotmail Tutorial
Hotmail Kids
Hotmail Kids — This tutorial discusses the options you have when considering opening a Hotmail account for your kids. "Hotmail Kids" is not currently an offering Windows Live Hotmail provides for children, which means that if your kids are going to use Hotmail, they will be using the same version of Hotmail you are using yourself. This tutorial will explain several options you have in opening a Hotmail account for children, and how to configure it so that your kids are safe, while using a Hotmail account. This tutorial will show you ways to help you setup Hotmail for kids: responsible parenting, and kids, especially young children, should have supervised access to the internet only — in our opinion.
Hotmail Kids and Ads
The first problem we see with Hotmail and kids is ads: the free version of Hotmail (the one you are automatically using when signing up), contains graphical ads, some of which may contain questionable images, fine for adult for certainly unfit for young children. So, if you plan on letting your kids use a Hotmail account from a web browser (as opposed to a desktop email client like Outlook Express or Windows Live Mail), our first recommendation would be to sign up for Hotmail Plus, a $20/year service that —in addition to increasing storage and other goodies— suppresses the ads altogether.
Maximum safety for Hotmail kids
But the safest Hotmail kids experience is to setup Hotmail in a desktop email program: unlike the live version of Hotmail, an email program gives you full control over which emails get through to your inbox. When using Windows Live Hotmail from a browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox, there are only limited ways you can filter incoming mail: everything goes to your kid's Hotmail inbox, or the Junk (spam) folder: in both cases, no emails are deleted, and can be clicked by your children, voluntarily or not.
Letting your kids use Hotmail from a browser and telling them not to look at the content of the junk mail folder is not a feasible solution, since inappropriate mail always filters through to the inbox - no spam blocker is perfect.
Here is the best solution to let your kids use Hotmail:
Hotmail kids inside an email program
By setting up Hotmail inside a modern email program, you have full control over the emails that go through to the inbox: by setting up "rules", you can tell your email client to delete any email that does not come from a pre-approved sender, etc. (This is something you can do in conjunction with Firewall spam filtering options, but in addition to being complicated, it will affect anyone using the computer/network behind the firewall).
We will update the list below when more tutorials are created for other desktop email clients, but in the meantime, here is how you setup email rules (aka "email filters") in these email programs, to keep your kids safe with Hotmail:
- Setup email rules in Outlook Express
- Email rules with Mac Mail
- Create email rules ("email filters") with Mozilla Thunderbird
By creating email rules/filters that delete any non-approved email, you are making already a huge step towards a safe email experience for kids. Again, kids will always be safest online when supervised by adults, whether they are using Windows Live Hotmail or surfing websites for children outside Hotmail.
Conclusion for Hotmail & kids
Here is a brief page that will help you make it safer for your kids to use Hotmail. This tutorial will be updated as we get new information on Hotmail kids, whether it comes from us, or from concerned parents who share with us their tips on making Hotmail (and email in general) safer for kids and older children.