WP 8.1 - Kids Corner

hepi

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Mar 6, 2010
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I love Kids Corner on my phone and think it is a great feature that is not really being touted enough by Microsoft. Has it been confirmed if kids corner can have a different or even no unlock code than the one I have set up for full phone access? I think it is kind of strange that the same unlock code is used to access kids corner and full access.

Thanks,
Dave
 

manicottiK

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Nov 24, 2011
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Microsoft did make a big deal about it at the launch of WP8, but enthusiasm seems to have died off. I don't believe that anything related to Kids Corner has been mentioned in any of the leaks.

The whole "separate or no PIN for Kids Corner" issue has been raised repeatedly. The arguments for it are letting your kids (or friends) play with your phone without your prior consent. The arguments against it are preventing that (mostly to preserve battery life for your own use) and in maintaining security. The security argument always gets pooh-poohed, but it's quite important in some circumstances.

Many businesses today have legal obligations to protect data given to them. (Think medical, financial, and educational records. Think about the news that Target may have "lost" 70 million credit card numbers.) Some businesses also want to protect other intellectual property (preliminary R&D results) or "secret" information (budget plans, competitive analysis, etc.). Whether the device accessing or holding company data is owned by the company or by the employee, the company still has an obligation to and/or interest in protecting the data. As such, some companies impose restrictions via Exchange ActiveSync or another security policy tool.

If Kids Corner is allowed to bypass those policies by letting the user grant access to apps and data without a password, the company's data could be lost and the company could be liable for the loss. This is why many companies that provide computers to employees do not give the employee local administrator access and don't let the employees create other accounts on the computers. The device is a business tool.

Of course, the whole "bring your own device" trend complicates this immensely. The tack that we've taken is that the ownership of the device holding the data is irrelevant. The usage, access, and retention restrictions belong to the data and follow it wherever it goes. In a case where an employee doesn't want the company's policy to apply to their device, the employee should keep the company's data off of their personal device. (Yes, this will lead back to the days of carrying around multiple phones. Because of the legal landscape, I don't currently see any other possible future.)

IF Microsoft allows users to pick a different password or no password for Kids Corner, I suspect that it will be rolled out in concert with new ActiveSync policies to "Allow" such access and that the default will be to disallow (since current versions of Exchange wouldn't know about the new option). Then, it would be up to the company to decide if it were willing to grant holders of its data the ability to effectively create a "guess access" account on the phone. This would shift the current contempt from Microsoft to each company. I would expect that virtually no company that is required to protect its data would grant the "Allow" permission.
 

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