McAfee Family Protection

The Easiest, Most Complete Way to Keep Your Children Safe Online

Parental Control Feature Summary

  • Time Limit Controls: Yes
  • Internet Blocking: Yes
  • Web Filtering: Yes
  • Chat Monitoring: Yes
  • Activity Reports: Yes
  • Email Alerts: Yes
  • Remote Access: No
  • Download Blocking: No
  • Predator Alerts: No
  • Keystroke Logging: No
  • 100% Guarantee: Yes
  • Trial Download: No
  • Price: $39.95

McAfee Family Protection Parental Control Software Review

McAfee has 35 filtering categories that parents can choose from to help them make sure their children have a safe surfing experience. It has advanced features that can even block https web addresses that most pornographic sites can use. Here are more ways McAfee can give your children a better internet experience:

  • It can filter YouTube videos and only allows children to view uploaded videos with suitable content.
  • It can alert parents via email or text message if their children posted their confidential information on their social networking accounts or during their chat conversations.
  • It can block certain applications like social networking and Instant Messaging applications.
  • It has 35 blocking categories that parents can choose from.
  • Children can email or text their parents to uplift a ban on a certain website.
  • It can filter proxy sites that children might use as a work around to visit prohibited sites.
  • It can block Instant Messaging sites like AOL, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo. Both of the IM conversations can also be recorded.
  • It has E-mail Screening feature that will only allow your children to email only approved list of email addresses.
  • Parents will be able to know if their children posted their home address, phone numbers, email addresses on their social networking accounts.
  • It shows detailed reports of your children’s attempted and visited websites, programs they ran and recordings of their IM conversations.
  • It effectively blocks pornographic sites whether or not they use “http” or “https” web addresses.

McAfee can help busy parents monitor and limit the use of their children’s computer activities. Parents have the options to manually input sites that they thing are harmful for their children or they can choose from McAfee’s 35 blocking categories. Its blocking feature is so powerful that it can block certain applications like the use of Facebooks, games, and IM Applications. However, it can only block IM applications from AOL, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo and cannot add more to it. On that note, your children can still use other sites such as Gtalk and AIM for their online social activities.

On the other hand, it can block peer-to-peer sharing which can be one means of children to acquire pornographic or unwanted materials. It can also analyze YouTube video contains and block videos that might be too off for your children. Blocking system also works with your children email services. Parents have the option to allow their children to email only pre-approved email addresses.

Parents have the option to be alerted via text message or email. For instance, if your child is searching news websites for an assignment and you are away and it was blocked by the software because of violent contents. McAfee can immediately notify you via text message that a certain news feed website was blocked which your child is attempting to see. Parents can then uplift the ban immediately. Children need not have to wait too long.

For savvy children on the other hand who might try to use web links and proxies to visit pornographic or blocked websites, McAfee can still prohibit them from visiting such sites. Unlike other software that only looks into http address to filter sites, McAfee can both check http and https websites.

McAfee also has time limit control feature that can schedule your children’s computer usage. Parents can allot number of hours for on weekdays and weekends. This can also help parents teach their children time management and disciple. This will be their perfect opportunity to impose more time for academic and sports activities.

McAfee’s reports on the other hand are so organized and details where it provides all your children’s visited web sites according to time and date. It can also show attempted sites that might have tried as well as applications that they have used.

The cost of McAfee is also competitive with other parental software because it can be installed up to 3 computers with 10 users for just $39.95. But then again, there are still some lacking features that we have yet to expect. Helpful features that could have been added are predator watch; download blocking and key stroke monitoring. These could have been more helpful to aid parents monitor more their children’s internet activities.