CyberPatrol – Cyber Policing for a Family

Now, in every house, children using internet is a common thing. They need it for their studies, references, and extra knowledge. But while browsing, they may come across some objectionable matter which they should not read or view. Similarly, they may send some sensitive information over the internet, which may be harmful themselves and their parents. Looking at the dangerous side-effects, parents must protect children from such content present on the web. Parents can achieve protection by choosing good parental control software for the computer at home. CyberPatrol is one such up-to-date parental control software to help parents. With CyberPatrol installed on the computer, children can safely browse the internet web-pages and they are allowed to visit appropriate sites.

When CyberPatrol is installed, a browser, Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox needs to be restarted. This will help the browser to read the settings done and make them effective from that very session. A control panel will appear on the screen from where all administrative tasks can be performed. From here, an administrator can create user profiles suitable for all family members. Type of the profile can be selected from the predefined list which has- Adult, Mature Teen, Young Teen and Child.

When tested with "Young Teen" user profile and web filtering also put on for all web-pages. This profile can also be customized manually if parents are savvy enough to achieve the exact desired level of monitoring. When searched using Google images for some terms, not all pictures were blocked.

Features :

• Age appropriate blocking and content filtering
• Admin can override all options
• Customization at the full extent possible for individual profiles
• Quick set up with Pre-defined profiles
• Scheduling feature to restrict time spent online
• IM and chat Log recording
• Detailed reports to view internet activity

Customer Support:
CyberPatrol Customer Support via email is available on the link: http://www.cyberpatrol.com/customerervice.asp

Representatives can provide help during business hours from Monday to Friday EST. Technical
Support is also available separately. FAQ and other knowledge articles also exist if one wants to find answers before going to Customer or Technical Support.

Easy Parental Control with iProtectYou

Protecting children, especially, who are technologically savvy is a tough job. Such kids want to constantly use internet to read and gather more information. An absence of parental control software, children can access any content on the websites which are not meant for them without any restriction. As the internet has many websites, which are not proper for any age levels; dangers exists when children visit such websites and it is parent’s responsibility to block children from using such websites. iProtectYou comes as a handy tool which allows parents to do exactly what they wish.

After the installation of this software, a "how-to" guide is given with the details of how to use the program to gain maximum security and control over the internet access of the family members or employees. It can be set up to be utilized in an individual or a group mode. It gives the tools needed to restrict web content and filter out unwanted contents. Each user setup is very easy and the control panel user interface is friendly enough for parents who are new to computer technology. Different features such as Internet Users and Groups, Timetable, Traffic Limits, Logs and Charts, and Settings will allow parents to set up a complete control system.

Internet Timetable allows parents to set up time limits in a day and blocking internet access during specified day or night hours. Users and Groups lets he administrator configure users and groups with different level of web filtering. Logs and Charts shows you reports on what each user accessed on the internet. Traffic Limits allows the administrator to set up restrictions to how many Mb are used daily. Settings give the administrator access to add trusted sites and newsgroups or manually add in websites or keywords which should be restricted.

Features :

• Filter for inappropriate web-pages, websites or newsgroups.

• Limit on time spent on internet.

• Control the data quantity being sent and received from the computer.

• Keywords based blocking for email, chat, IM, and P2P sites.

• Restriction on download and execution of programs

• Search engines with image blocking

Customer Support:

The technical support is available via the website SoftForYou.com, when purchased a full version. FAQ section is also available to get answers to common questions on the link http://www.softforyou.com/ip-

faq.html.

Guardian Monitor – Guardian for Internet

Guardian Monitor is strong software. Most of times, it worked well. In comparison with other professional and sophisticated applications, the user interface is just not at par.

The strength of this application is its Peer-To-Peer (P2P) functionality. With this feature, parents can observe their kids activities on Internet. What pages they browse, what files they download etc. These days, biggest concern of parents is illegal supply of copyrighted material. This is a nice feature which makes the application strong.

What Features?
Guardian Monitor software gives an option to run in "hidden" or "open" mode. This is a good feature for those parents who want their kids to know that their Internet activities are under observation.

How easy to operate?
The software is quite easy to use; however, as mentioned earlier, the user interface is not up to the mark. The contemporary user interface conventions are totally missing. So while using, it gives a feel of a traditional application that is written, may be, 10 years back. Sometimes the user interface of the application looks cheap as compared with the other applications in the market; however, functionally this software performs really well.

Effectiveness?
The software performed well in the expected areas, such as files being downloaded, pages visited, but, to the surprise, it could not track web-based emails. Other mechanism, such as, screenshots, have to be used.

Information Accessibility
As mentioned above the user interface is poor, so viewing the recorded data is a pain. The access of the computer where data is recorded becomes mandatory to have a glimpse of the recorded data.

Customer Support
Customer support cannot be rated as satisfactory as it is available only through email. This is a turn-off for some people. For any such software, a phone support becomes a must, at least on a single-call basis. The team behind Guardian Monitor provides support 12 hours a day, all 7 days of week. They also claim to respond most of the customer queries within 24-48 hours. The Support staff operation hours are not mentioned on the website, so not much information is available with respect to support.