Best Net Nanny type software (1 Viewer)

[Luke_Y]

My son (12 yo) is getting a computer in his room. I bought him a Dell and it came with Norton Internet Security- which has "parental controls". I am not familiar with Norton as I use AVG on all our other computers. We have a wired/wireless network (wep on - default passwords changed) and the router has a hardware firewall.

So, I dont think I need all the other features of Norton on his computer and after the free 90 days would have to pay $40 for a one year subscription.

Our router has a filtering feature, but it is only keyword filtering and applies to all computers on the network. It holds 30-50 keywords I think. I filled it up with creative words and then tried to surf adult and hate sites. Many blocked but was able to get through to quite a bit so thats not a solution.

Should I just stick with the Norton on his computer, or is there a better solution in a stand alone internet content filter type product that I should use and use AVG for virus protection like the rest of our computers?

 

[SethH]

bsafe is supposed to be one of the best programs out there, but it's a little more expensive than Norton. It runs $49/year. Probably well worth it though.

 

[Tekara]

I tend to shy away from using software installed on the computer that is being used. It's pretty likely that your son will either find a work around, or what typically happens is that you go to fix something and he catches how you disabled the software.

Something that I have gotten a lot of good use out of is buying a seperate router (should be able to find something that has some good parental blocking, particularly nowadays) and connecting only the computers that I want to be controlled to it and then connecting that router up to the main router. It's a bit of work but it's a one time fee and with all the control done by an external system, even a fresh install of windows won't bypass the filtering.

 

[Luke_Y]

Seth, thanks I'll look into bsafe. Only $10 more than Norton I'll try to compare and see if it's better.

Rob, I'll look at routers. It's parental controls would have to be quite a bit better than the one I have as it's not up to the task.

 

[Tekara]

here's an acticle that I think you'd like:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1619375,00.asp

"Router vendors may have found a simpler and more affordable approach. Linksys and ZyXEL have both partnered with online parental-control services—Netopia and Cerberian, respectively—to offer a single point of protection right in your router, protecting all the systems on your network. Rather than locking users to specific systems with content filtering enabled, the routers let users log on to any PC on the network and get their individual permissions applied. And if multiple users share a single system, the log-on technique ensures that the filtering options are customized for the current user."

I've never used those routers before, so I can't really add much, but it seems to be exactly what your looking for.

 

[Mike Fassler]

if you have a router hooked up to your pc, you can limit most anything you want directly from it. this is the easiest way for blocking access to unwanted things.

 

[SethH]

That's the cool thing about the bsafe product is that it has an "accountability" function that tracks websites in a log on their server then sends it to a specified email address once a week or once a month. That way, even doing stuff like clearing the browser history or deleting cookies won't get around it. I'm sure there's some hack, but I think it'd take awhile.

 

[Tekara]

I always found renaming the exe file for the program and a simple reboot solved a large portion of my problems when dealing with filtering software. When you've got time and privacy really anything is possible, especially when it's a child!! .