Norton Online Family

A smarter way to keep your kids safe online

Parental Control Feature Summary

  • Time Limit Controls: Yes
  • Internet Blocking: Yes
  • Web Filtering: Yes
  • Chat Monitoring: Yes
  • Activity Reports: Yes
  • Email Alerts: No
  • Remote Access: Yes
  • Download Blocking: No
  • Predator Alerts: No
  • Keystroke Logging: No
  • 100% Guarantee: No
  • Trial Download: No
  • Price: $29.99

Norton Online Family Parental Control Review

Norton Online Family, unlike other parental control software, it does not only impose rules and violates your children’s privacy but rather encourages open line of communication for both parents and children. It provides a different approach to filter and block websites and monitor your children’s every internet activities. Norton Online Family gives every child a freedom of speech to voice out their side and to explain why they need to visit such website or why they need to engage in such applications. Complete features include:

  • Can be installed on multiple computers (up to 15 children with 10 computers per family) provided that each member of the family registers their individual accounts.
  • Parents have the option to pre set house rules and internet restrictions per child’s profile and age.
  • It provides a well organized report where it can show the most visited websites and most frequent chat buddies of your children.
  • Reports are also categorized and rated as to how much percentage each categories of searches were made by your children. Examples of categories are entertainment and music, web mails and many more.
  • It can provide children the option to explain themselves once the site is blocked or filtered.
  • Parents have the options to block websites according to their preference from over 47 categories.
  • Has filtering feature that can filter websites and content from popular proxy.

Norton Online Family opens a line of communication for both parents and children. It is not an issue whether or not it can filter or block sites because test shows that it can accurately block them. One test even shows that 99% of all pornographic sites were blocked by Norton Online Family. The argue here is whether to give your children the freedom to still visit sites that you think are too off for them.

For instance, you have an 8 yr old child that wants to view web site content about “abortion”. A small text box window will appear telling them that they cannot view the site. However, your 8 yr old child can still message you to explain their side as to why they need to visit them. The site will remain blocked not until you remove the restriction.

On the other hand, if you have an older child and want to visit the same site containing contents of “abortion”, a warning sign will pop up restricting them to visit such site. They then have the options to either go back and leave the site or explain to their parents why they need to visit the site and continue to visit it anyways. Parents will be then alerted that their children ignored the warning sign and see what their children’s explanation was. This way, it eliminates the so authoritative approach of parents but encourages a more diplomatic approach. It will be then up to the parents to converse the cause and effect of why they need to restrict such sites and discuss flaws if they violated their restrictions.

Norton Online Family has features to filter and block sites to over 47 alerted categories. It can filter sites with drug, pornographic, cult, news and many more. It can even filter sites up to the slightest details like lingerie, hate, and job searches. It can also powerfully filter file sharing, Instant Messaging sites and even access to social networking sites. But then again, if you allow your children, they can still access such sites even after warning signs have been given and can still have means of way to explain themselves.

Norton Online Family is also so easy to install. This is beneficial for parents who have a lot of children and to families who have more than 2 computers. The software does not need parents to install it one by one on each computer. They can install it anywhere in the world at anytime with its web-based installation feature. If you have more than 2 children; however, you need to ask them to set up their individual accounts.

The reports are also organized where it can give you all the most visited sites and searches your children did. It can even check your children’s most conversed buddies on all their Instant Messaging accounts like AOL, AIM and many more. The reports are also showed per category. For example, it can show you the percentage of sites your children visited such as entertainment and music sites and even how much percentage they a lot to their social networking and Instant Messaging accounts.

Norton Online Family brings a higher notch of parenting. It does not only immediately violate anyone’s privacy and rights but it can definitely build a strong foundation between parents and children. Opinions of both sides are heard and discussed. Now that is responsive parenting!