Toolbox Keepers - Part 4
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This round of toolbox keepers includes just one keeper: ContentProtect by ContentWatch. It’s an Internet filter, also known as parental control software. My family and I use it everytime we’re on the Web at home and I highly recommend it.
Of the software and services I’ve included and will include in this series of Toolbox Keepers, this is the only one that has a price tag. But then again, if there is a free parental control software package out there, I haven’t heard of one. This is one of those must-haves, and the peace of mind that it affords you is well worth the cost.
ContentProtect is very versatile in that it allows you to setup profiles for each user. By configuring it to respond to certain types of sites per profile, you can have better control over where your child goes online and know where they go.
For example, take the category “Apparel”. Let’s say you don’t mind your daughter browsing for clothes at her favorite online store, but you don’t want her to just go shopping anytime she pleases. You can tell ContentProtect to ask for a password anytime a site of that nature is accessed. When it does, she’ll have to ask you to enter the password, thus giving you an opportunity to decide if she should being doing that. Or you could block her from having access from that type of site all together.
It also gives you the ability to recategorize sites. What ContentProtect may think is a restricted site, may very well be something you find acceptable. To avoid you having to override the software each time they access that particular site, you can give it the greenlight. What this means is that you can let them access that site, but still maintain control over that type of site. So the next time they go to a site in a particular category you’ve told it to block access to, you don’t lose control.
There are two other great features parents should find useful.
One is that it has reporting capabilities. It can show you Web usage for each profile in a graph. Is Bobby spending too much time on gaming sites instead of studying? With ContentProtect, you can know.
The other feature is that it can e-mail you when a profile has made an attempt to access a site that the user is not allowed to access. Now, I can tell you from my own experience that on occasion there are false positives — it says I’m accessing a site that’s not allowed, but I know for a fact that I’m not because it’s the same site that I go to every day. It could be that on that day the advertising on that site contains a word that ContentProtect suspects to be bad. But like I said earlier, if it continues and you know the site is safe, you can always configure it to allow the site and stop it from blocking you.
There are tons of parental control software products available, many of which offer the features I’ve mentioned above. But if you don’t have one installed on your computer, or you do and want to make a comparison, give this one a try (of course, you’ll want to uninstall the previous first to avoid conflicts).
ContentProtect can be used for 14 days for free, plus they have other Internet safety-related products that you may be interested in.
If you don’t like this particular software, then at least get something! Even kids who know better and try to avoid bad sites can still inadvertently get to them without much effort.
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Unfortuantely ContentProtect is rendered COMPLETELY useless if any of your kids knows any secure proxy services online, e.g. https://proxify.com. Not only does it allow unlimited access through the proxy, it does not even check the internet for the time filter configured on ContentProtect - if your kids can therefore get access to the PC at ANY time, they can surf the web freely, without you having any say. Secure sites cannot be added to the list of prohibited sites either. After purchasing the software, I am currently uninstalling it in order to buy a different product (e.g. CyberSitter).