Hardware Geeks

Today Symantec has made available to the general public Norton Online Family, which is currently in Beta. Norton Online Family is a web based tool that requires a small app to be installed on your computers. Once the app is installed you can then set rules and regulations for each account on that computer. The service is currently beta but everyone can sign up today to try it out.

I have been using the service since last week Thursday and it has already helped me monitor my nephew web activities even though we do not live in the same home, and while this is not the purpose of the service, I also have set it to monitor my mothers computer and prevent her from visiting potentially dangerous sites. I hope I will get less calls from her asking me to fix her computer.

Back to talking about my nephew, he is 12 years old and I got him a computer so that he could do home work, even though he is in the 7th grade, all his homework has to be done on a computer. So of course we got him Internet. I personally thought we could trust him not to do anything bad on the computer but I was wrong. The first day the Online Family from Norton was installed on his computer, I discovered he had a little thing for sex sites.

But instead of making it to the sex site, he was redirected to the following page.

He then preceded to try a half dozen other sex sites and they all redirected to the same page.

But it doesn’t just let you a parent block them from porn sites or malicious sites, it will also alert you to what search terms they search the web or youtube for. So if your kid start searching for drugs or guns, you will see those searches, and possibly be able to confront your kid before they try drugs or buy a gun.

You will also know who they talk to online and can prevent them from talking to certain people, if they do talk to that prohibited person you will be notified. You can also set certain times when they can and can not access the web.

The tool is a great tool and a Must Have for any parent! The service is currently in Beta and available for free. However we are told that there will be a fee when the beta ends but we were not told what that fee would be.

Even though the product is currently beta, and we normally wouldn’t give a beta product an award we feel the Online Family Service from Norton deserves our 5 Star Must Have award.

Post Tags: software  review  symantec  norton  online family  parental controls 

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