Protect your kids, and wallet, with My Family

Protecting your children from unsuitable or numerous app/game downloads doesn’t only benefit your child, but also your wallet – thanks to the My Family feature.

If your child owns a Windows Phone there’s a high probability that they will want to download content from Windows Phone store. That alone isn’t cause for concern, however if your credit card details are logged as a payment method on the device you’ll soon notice their downloading habits. As a parent, you can limit this.

Activating My Family isn’t done on the phone, but within your Microsoft account and the My Family section.

After you’ve logged into your own account you’ll also need to enter your child’s login credentials. Hopefully you’ll have these to hand, or depending on the age of your child you’ll need their compliance.

If you’ve got more than one child you can add them all to My Family, too. Additionally, you can add another parent into the My Family account so both you and your partner can manage your children’s settings.

There are two main sections within the child’s settings, App+game downloads and Game Rating Filter. From here you can Allow free and paid, Allow free only which also prevents in-app purchases, and Don’t allow to turn off downloads completely. Or alternatively, change the Game-rating filter to restricted content meant for older eyes.

For Xbox games, you’ll need to go to the Xbox website and accept the Xbox Terms of Use on your child’s behalf.

If you’ve got little ones using their own Windows Phone, activating My Family gives you peace of mind.

Has your child run up any huge download bills? Activating My Family will put a stop to that.