Question: I'm challenged with building Macintosh based Kiosks / workstations for a Children's Museum that would be K-6 kid safe. There seems to be no Kiosk software (like "At Ease" under OS 9) which locks prying eyes out of the operating system and sensitive file folders. After overcoming that hurdle, then there's the keyboard and mouse to protect.
The IT Guy says:
You don’t need any third party software to lock down a Macintosh running OS X in the way you describe. Running OS 10.3 Panther, go to System Preferences and click on Accounts. Create a new user Account by clicking the plus sign in the lower left corner. In the security tab, do NOT click the checkbox “Allow user to administer this computer.†In the Limitations tab, choose “Simple Finder.†Select the one application you will want children to use at the Kiosk. Set the login options so the computer on restart automatically logs in with this new Kiosk user account. Define the program you want users to run as a startup item, so it launches immediately upon startup and user login.
With this setup, kiosk users will not be able to use any other program than the one you specify, and if they log out, will not be able to log in as your administrative user unless they know or guess the administrator password. I would recommend not setting a password for the kiosk user account which loads by default at startup.
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