Control Your Kid's Time Online: Time Out Software
Although it is a handy homework resource, the Internet does contain many time-wasting distractions and predators who try to take advantage of children in chat rooms. PC monitoring software helps parents control which sites their children visit, see who they have been chatting with and even restrict how much time they spend online each day.
To check the effectiveness of three monitoring programs, I tested each to see if it could distinguish between whitehouse.gov, an official government site, and whitehouse.org, a parody site filled with rude, adult-oriented humor.
Safe Eyes 5.0 (16-day free trial/can be installed on three computers)
Easy to set-up and use, Safe Eyes allows parents to select specific days and times for Internet usage. Each child gets a separate account and only parents can unblock offensive Web sites. During the test, the program denied access to the parody site and allowed access to the official White House site.
Safe Eyes also offers instant message monitoring, logs conversations and restricts access to the more popular instant messaging services. Computer usage is written to a log file that can be reviewed by parents.
Kids Watch Time Control (15-day free trial/can be installed on three computers)
Time Control allows each child to have his or her own account with Internet time and day restrictions selected by the parent. The program also keeps children from downloading programs and restricts access to software already installed on the computer, making it an excellent choice for a PC used by the whole family.
I created a new account on my PC and set it to child access, but Time Control, did, unfortunately, allow access to the White House parody site. Despite this loophole, it's a versatile program with unique monitoring functions such as Predator Watch, which allows parents to locate and track predators and sexual offenders in their neighborhood.
PC Tattletale Internet Monitor For Kids (7-day free trial/can be installed on two computers)
Perfectly suited for kids who spend their online time chatting and sending instant messages, PC Tattletale logs keystroke, online conversations and emails sent back and forth to friends and online buddies. The program even performs a screen capture every few seconds, which can be played back using a built-in VCR function. Offensive Web sites are easily blocked and the "Web Watch" option logs sites that contain certain offensive keywords.
After adding an offensive word to the list found on the White House parody site, however, Web Watch failed to log it. Since this program performs multiple screen captures, it also may cause the computer to run slowly, as it did with mine. If the computer becomes too sluggish, increase the time between screen captures from the default setting of four seconds to something higher.
Installation Issues
During installation, the PC monitoring software requires access to the Internet and some anti-virus programs may send out a warning message. My Norton Protection Center initially would not allow me to install PC Tattletale, which forced me to temporarily disable my firewall to complete the installation process.
Steven Bryan