The Internet can be a great resource for fun and education for children. However, without proper parental supervision, it can also be a place for bullying and access to information you may wish your child didn’t know about.
Sitting next to your children every minute they’re online isn’t practical or even possible. Thankfully, there are a number of Internet filters that can do everything from blocking inappropriate websites to scheduling time online for children. They can also produce reports on your child’s online behavior.
Prices for the most sophisticated Internet filters can be quite high, but we’ve found five that handle basic child monitoring for free.
Norton Family Online
Symantec has spent a lot of time studying how the modern family uses computers. With Norton Family Online, you can set rules for all the computers in your house using a web-based console. Agents on each computer then enforce those rules. This Internet filter allows parents to view a report that tracks a child’s online use for the previous seven days – that includes browsing, searches and behavior on social networks. Norton Family Online also sends parents email alerts when rules have been violated.
If you want long-term information about computer usage, regular e-mail summaries, and monitoring of videos your child has watched, you would need to upgrade to Norton’s premier version, which costs $49.99.
Windows Live Family Safety
If you have a Windows Vista or higher operating system, you already have some parental controls built in. Windows Live Family Safety is a free extension you can download that builds out those protections.
The Family Safety Internet filter differs from Norton’s in that it gives parents a choice of levels of protection rather than allowing parents to choose categories of content to block. Here is the range in levels:
- Most restrictive in which all sites are blocked except the ones parents have OK’d
- Child-friendly which allows sites that have been vetted as appropriate for children
- General interest, which allows broader access to general interest websites
- Online communication, which permits social networking, chat, and e-mail.
- Warn on adult level, which gives a warning before granting access to adult sites
The downside with Family Safety, for some parents, is that it requires each child to have a Windows Live ID account. The website blocking also has varying degrees of effectiveness, depending on which browser you use, according to online reviewers.
Visit Windows Live Family Safety
Qustodio
The genius behind Qustodio is its real-time categorization, which can evaluate and block even brand-new websites. As with Norton, parents monitor children’s behavior using an online account. Parents can block sites according to category. Qustodio sometimes has trouble categorizing image-based sites, but parents can turn on the option for blocking uncategorized sites.Qustodio can also force Safe Search in Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
Some of Qustodio’s cons include the fact that a child who has access to administrator privileges can disable the filter or fool the time scheduler. Reports from Qustodio don’t use your local time zone.
DNS Angel
Compared to other Internet filters, DNS Angel is pretty bare-bones, but it’s very good at the one thing is does do.
Downloading and launching are very straightforward and once you’ve launched the program, you simply click “MetaCert DNS.” From then on, when anyone using your computer tries to access a website on any browser, DNS Angel will send the request to the MetaCert DNS server. If it’s a porn site, it will be blocked, but everything else will continue to work. Click on “Restore DNS” to undo blocking.
KuruPira WebFilter
This Internet filter, on the other hand, is much more inclusive. It can block websites, social media, messaging, and schedules Internet time. KuraPira is also fairly simple to use, but its drawback is that some of its features are pretty basic. For example, there are no options to vary restrictions according to age. Whether your child is in pre-school or high school, the filter works the same.
Because no one filter does everything, some experts recommend parents install more than one filter on their home computers.
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