For some time, Microsoft has included the Family Safety program as part of its Windows Live Essentials suite. Among other things, it allows parents to set up online accounts for their kids so they only view certain websites and are only able to access certain email accounts.
Now it looks like Microsoft is quietly making a change to Family Safety in terms of its email features. McAkins Online has received an email from Microsoft announcing that starting on March 18, 2013, it will switch the monitored accounts over to the "exclusive" mode at Outlook.com.
Microsoft states in the email, "These settings work for all email programs, so now you can help keep your children safer across any email platform they use, not just those created by Microsoft."
Contacts from those monitored accounts will be placed in the Safe Senders and Domains list in Outlook.com and emails sent from those contacts will go to the monitored account"s inbox. Contacts not on the list will go to the account"s junk mail folder, although Microsoft adds that children could still view those emails in that folder. Finally, kids can also add their own contacts to the monitored account.
On the surface, these upcoming changes sound like Microsoft is more than willing to add support from other email services to its Family Safety settings, and it will also allow kids who might have Gmail, Yahoo Mail or other online accounts to use them via Outlook.com
Source: McAkins Online | Image via Microsoft