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Netnanny - How Netnanny Compares To The Competition

Despite our best efforts as parents to protect our kids from the dangers lurking on the internet, it appears that we are still losing ground. According to a 2006 study performed by the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, since 1999 (date of last study) unwanted exposures to sexual materials and online harassment has increased proportionally for young internet users.

If it was not obvious before, it certainly should be now, that internet filtering software should be a part of every parent's arsenal to protect their kids from online threats.

NetNanny is one of the most well known and popular internet filter programs on the market today. It has been around for some time and was recently acquired ContentWatch. In this article we will explore some of the key features of NetNanny and how it compares of other products on the market.

As the name implies, NetNanny is parental control software that is geared towards younger children. As a result, it does not have some of the more advanced features included in other parental control software that would typically be used to monitor older children.

What It Does Not Have

Since NetNanny is geared towards younger children it does not include some of the more advanced monitoring and logging features of some higher priced internet filters. It does not record key strokes (key logger) so you won't be able to see anything that is being typed in emails or chat rooms (though you can partially or fully block access to chat rooms and IM). Also, the software is not invisible, but rather pops a warning up on the monitor if an attempt is made to go to a blocked website (although this is really not such a bad feature for younger children since you are trying to teach them what is and is not acceptable rather than just spying invisibly on them).

What it Does Have

Despite the monitoring weaknesses, NetNanny does have very good internet filtering and blocking capabilities. The newest version integrates seamlessly with "Safe Search" options found in popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Dogpile, AltaVista, Lycos, AllTheWeb, and MSN. This means your children can't search on a search engine and even see links to blocked sites. This new feature enables better protection against pornographic images when doing an "image only" search. The only way to bypass the safe search is with your unique administrator password. NetNanny is also self updating, so you will always have the most current version and up-to-date lists of pornographic and other questionable sites installed to provide maximum protection with minimal effort on your part.

Another recently added feature is the remote management feature which allows parents to manage and maintain NetNanny remotely from any internet connection. Another strong feature is the reporting feature, which provides a detailed report of internet activity, both visited and attempted to visit sties. Finally, the software also offers customizable restrictions for each family member and time limits to control the amount of time your children can spend online.

Although it is certainly not the most sophisticated parental control software on the market, NetNanny appears to provide solid internet filtering capabilities. Just remember that this software is probably best suited for parents with younger children (ages 10 or younger) since it is not intended to be used as a strong monitoring(spying) device, but more as a filtering device. Of course any software is only as good as the person using it. So we as parents much take the time to learn how to properly use our internet filtering software. But having software that installs easily and updates itself certainly helps us in our quest to keep our children's online experience safe.

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