 | By Becky Waring
You can do your best to keep your children safe by using one of two top Internet access–control utilities.
My top choices for little kids and teens cover all the bases: protocol-level filtering, usage time limits, monitoring tools, and remote management.
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Parents, there are some things software can’t do
When my editor at Windows Secrets asked whether I would tackle parental-control software for this column, the topic hit close to home. My sister and her husband have three small boys. The four-year-old twins are just starting to use computers, poking away at educational software and occasionally watching animal videos on YouTube with their parents.
Lately, the four-year-olds have been trying to access YouTube on their own, prompting fear on the part of their parents that they will be exposed to inappropriate videos or — horrors! — somehow find themselves dropped into the sinister hinterlands of the World Wide Web.
So, Aunt Becky was charged with the task of figuring out how best to protect their innocence — for a few more years, at least. Thus began my odyssey into the bizarre world of parental-control software.
I say “bizarre” because parental control is really a misnomer. There is simply no way to prevent all the countless bad things floating around the Internet from reaching your child, no more than there’s a way for your antivirus program to provide 100% protection against malware.
And with parental controls, you have the added and very real problem of kids — many of whom are far more tech-savvy than their parents — actively trying to circumvent the controls.
Parental-control programs merely act as a first line of defense against such dangers as pornography, profanity, chat-room predators, and offensive spam. The list of what these programs can’t do is long indeed: none attempt to stop programs from being downloaded and installed, for example, nor do they prevent the use of proxy sites designed specifically to circumvent filtering.
No software can replace an actual parent actively supervising his or her child’s Internet use. But of course, that’s not always possible, which is where these two programs come in. I’ll also offer some advice on implementing a child-safe system that meets the needs of your family.
After studying up on the products in this category, I found that Safe Eyes and Net Nanny universally topped the reviews. Other parental-control contenders are BSafe Online, Cyber Patrol, and Webroot Parental Controls.
Note that I recommend these programs for two different age groups: Safe Eyes for preteens and Net Nanny for teenagers. Thus, they’re sorted in this column by age group, not with the top-scoring program appearing first.
INTERNET SAFETY SAFE EYES 5 Best parental-control software for wee ones
With very young children, the biggest worry is accidental exposure. If they can’t yet read or write much, they are unlikely to be Googling ways around your controls or even understand that they can.
Also, small children don’t have homework assignments that require access to the Web at large, so you can maintain stricter site filtering.
That’s where Safe Eyes 5 comes in.
At U.S. $50 per year for up to three computers (with a 14-day free trial), Safe Eyes is not cheap. But it’s easy to install and use, and it comes with 24/7 phone support plus quick-response e-mail support.
Safe Eyes lets you set up individual logins with customized controls for each child. You can fine-tune filtering for 35 categories of Web sites. In addition, you can create your own lists of sites that are allowed or denied.
The program can send parents alerts via phone, e-mail, or text message whenever a child attempts to access a blocked site. There’s also a keyword feature that blocks access to sites containing any word in Safe Eyes’ dictionary of profane and sexually suggestive terms, regardless of whether the sites appear on the blocked-sites list.
For small children, the best course of action is to whitelist a few sites that you feel comfortable allowing them to access on their own, such as Seussville and Animal Planet.
Save your visits to more unpredictable sites, such as YouTube, for when you’re surfing together — when you can enter a password to override the controls, if you wish. The very fact that your kids will have to ask you before they can access other sites helps you be aware of their (and their friends’) level of Web knowledge.
Similarly, Safe Eyes lets you restrict your child’s e-mail access to a whitelist of approved friends and relatives. Anyone not on the list will be blocked from sending e-mail to, or receiving messages from, your child.
Other Safe Eyes features include the ability to schedule Internet usage windows and set overall limits for time spent online. The program generates reports on all the sites your children visited, blocks e-mail and instant messaging, and stops peer-to-peer file sharing at the protocol level, including BitTorrent and GNUtella. Safe Eyes can even record the full text of IM sessions.
Figure 1. Safe Eyes blocks many common IM applications but misses others, such as Skype and Pidgin, which you have to add to its blocked list. Safe Eyes stores its logs online, so they can’t be tampered with. The program’s time limits are based on Internet time, so changing a PC’s system clock won’t defeat the protection. And you can set Safe Eyes to block Internet access altogether when a user logs out.
I also liked the fact that you can block any installed application from accessing the Internet, not just IM and e-mail programs. You may want to limit children to using a specific browser — for example, one into which you have installed such additional safeguards as safe search, ad blocking, and anti-phishing tools. (See my July 7, 2008,
review of Firefox security add-ons for more.)
For older and savvier kids, however, Safe Eyes’ protections break down quickly. For example, I had no problem using many Web-based e-mail services, even though I had supposedly blocked this category of sites.
While you can add such sites to the blacklist, there are too many for any parent to keep up with, and Safe Eyes’ list is obviously incomplete.
Similarly, if you block usage of AIM, Trillian, and other IM programs, that doesn’t prevent Web-based IM access. I logged onto AIM via Meebo.com with no problem and was also able to download, install, and use Skype, even though I had theoretically blocked all IM programs.
Another much-touted feature, which monitors outgoing transmissions for personal data such as your address and phone number, simply notifies you that the breach has taken place — rather than stopping it to begin with. This makes it pretty useless, in my opinion.
I was also frustrated by the program’s cursory and incomplete documentation, which contains no mention of such key features as Safe Eyes’ ability to perform remote overrides. The help files answered practically none of the questions I had about what the program could and could not do.
I had to test things out by trial and error to make sure a particular program was blocked or a logging feature worked the way I thought it did, for example.
Overall, while Safe Eyes can provide a tight net for small children, it’s easily circumvented by older kids. For them, you’ll need more protections, such as those found in my top choice for controlling a teen’s use of the Internet.
NET NANNY 5 Top parental-control software for older kids
While no parental-control program on the planet stands a chance against system-savvy teens — even nongeek teens could guess your password or simply use a PC at a friend’s house — Net Nanny 5 tries the hardest to foil them.
Net Nanny can be more expensive than Safe Eyes, depending on how many PCs you have. Pricing starts at $40 per year for the first computer and $20 for each additional system (with a 14-day free trial). For a three-computer household, that adds up to $80 a year, $30 higher than Safe Eyes.
Installing Net Nanny is an overly complex process. In my testing, downloading the program required many connections to the vendor’s server, which generated several error messages. Not knowing what was wrong, I started the download and installation three times using different e-mail addresses until I finally succeeded in completing the process.
It turned out that my installation woes arose from problems Net Nanny was having with its server that morning, pointing up a pitfall of any filtering software: the programs depend on access to a central site to refer to their blacklists and to perform account maintenance.
(Note that the need to check with a central server when filtering can also impact browsing performance. During my tests, however, I didn’t experience any perceptible slowdown over my fast DSL connection.)
Complementing its complexity, Net Nanny provides 83 pages of documentation, which are far more useful than Safe Eyes’ measly 20 pages. The documentation clued me in to features I was unaware of and answered most of the questions I had about the program. My first question was how to turn on the controls, since nothing seemed to be blocked in the app’s default mode and no password was required.
I eventually figured out that you need to switch immediately to “User mode” to start creating accounts and passwords, and you must customize settings for them. This is something you should not have to read the manual to figure out.
After doing so, I quickly created a test “child” account and went through the filtering options to block Web-based IM and e-mail. Unlike Safe Eyes, Net Nanny blocked Meebo and Me.com correctly, indicating that Net Nanny’s protocol filtering or blacklists are more up-to-date.
Figure 2. Net Nanny’s Web-filter settings offer plenty of options. At the program’s most restrictive filtering levels, Net Nanny was more effective than Safe Eyes, stopping access in more cases. This is perhaps due to the more granular controls it offers users.
However, even Net Nanny failed the download-and-install-Skype test. I was chatting away on Skype immediately, even with every IM-blocking option on.
Both Net Nanny and Safe Eyes offer the ability to override controls remotely. This is useful if you’re out and your teenagers need to access a site to finish their homework or want extra time beyond their daily allotment, for example.
Both programs also have Mac versions, so you can use a single product to protect a multiplatform household.
Other Net Nanny features include integration with the Safe Search options in many Web browsers (it will automatically turn Safe Search back on if your kid turns it off), toll-free tech support, automatic updates, blocking of peer-to-peer download protocols, usage time limits, and customizable reports of each child’s Internet activities.
The downside to Net Nanny’s power is that the program is far less intuitive to use than Safe Eyes. However, once you read the manual, you’ll have a much better understanding of the program’s features than you get when reading Safe Eyes’ documentation.
That’s good, because when it comes to Web access, you’ll need all your Windows Secrets smarts to outwit your teenagers.
Emphasizing the ‘parent’ in parental control
Parental-control software is only as good as the mom or dad supervising it. You can’t just install any such program and think your work is done.
The single biggest loophole is that your kids may guess your password or learn it by watching you enter it. Then they’ll merrily override the controls whenever they want. Also, an older child with more privileges may give his or her password to a younger sibling, unwittingly or not.
That’s why it’s absolutely imperative that you read these programs’ logs regularly to see what sites your kids have been visiting. Also, pay attention to the alerts they send you, no matter how often they arrive.
Your best guarantee of good Internet behavior is simply to put the computer in an open area where a parent or other responsible person will be present when the kids are using it.
Don’t allow kids to use a computer alone in their rooms — advice that goes double for smartphones. Your children may kick and scream, but it’s not much use to restrict computer-based Web browsing if they have full access on a cell phone.
Make homework and surfing a parent-child activity, where you’re always nearby and available for assistance. Come over frequently and check what they’re up to. This will have benefits beyond Internet-access control.
Talk with your kids about their Web use, and set clear rules and guidelines. Are Facebook and MySpace allowed? IM? Under what circumstances and with whom? Make sure you know all your child’s passwords, and check their IM logs and e-mail activity regularly.
Also, make sure your children aren’t spending a lot of time on a PC with nonexistent or lax controls at a friend’s house or other location.
Finally, be aware that your kids are — or will become — more computer-literate than you are. Common workarounds for parental-control software include installing alternative browsers and IM clients, changing router parameters, setting up separate user accounts with full privileges, resetting the system clock, and installing a second hard drive (something any teenager can do for little money). A little Googling will turn up many sites with complete instructions for doing so.
But don’t despair. With a combination of good control software and good parenting, you can prevent your child from encountering most unsafe or inappropriate sites and also learn more about their friends and interests than they might otherwise share with you.
Becky Waring has worked as a writer and editor for PC World, NewMedia Magazine, CNET, The San Francisco Chronicle, Technology Review, Upside Magazine, and many other news sources. She alternates the Best Software column with Windows Secrets contributing editor Scott Spanbauer.
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