Net Nanny 5.6

Back in 1994, Bill Clinton's first term was in full swing, Windows 3.1 was the operating system du jour, and Net Nanny appeared as the first consumer Internet filter. ContentWatch acquired the venerable product in January of 2007 and married it to the home version of its existing ContentProtect content-filtering utility. The offspring of this union, called Net Nanny 5.6, bears a much stronger resemblance to ContentProtect than to its other parent, but bits of Net Nanny surface here and there.

As soon as you install Net Nanny, it starts working. Out of the box, it blocks access to eight categories of undesirable Web sites and records all Web activity and IM conversations. That may be fine for some, but if you share the same computer with the kids or if the kids span a wide age range, you'll want to configure per-user settings. You can associate settings with Windows accounts, define user profiles specific to Net Nanny, or use a combination of the two—it's very flexible. Program-specific profiles can be configured to log off automatically after a set time, so Preschool Persephone doesn't wind up surfing under Teenage Tony's less-restrictive settings. There are no predefined age-specific profiles like those in Webroot Parental Controls, but when you configure a new profile you can duplicate settings from an existing one.
Like Safe Eyes 5, Net Nanny offers excellent support for the multi-computer family (additional licenses are half-price). Just give each child the same profile name on each computer—the Windows account name need not be the same. The configuration changes you make on one computer are stored on ContentWatch's servers and replicated on the other computers when you choose "Refresh Profiles," or when any user logs on.—Next: Comprehensive Categories

ContentProtect 2.0 relied totally on real-time analysis of page content to categorize sites. This allowed it to handle brand-new sites and to block individual pages rather than a whole a site, when appropriate. However, the analysis slowed browsing slightly and could be fooled by sites using pictures instead of text. The current version first checks a site database acquired along with the Net Nanny product and escalates to full text analysis only if the site hasn't been categorized, or if the site's content is known to change rapidly. And it filters Web traffic below the browser level: In testing it blocked every browser I tried, including several virtual unknowns and one that I wrote myself.

The Filter Settings page initially displays nine categories that you probably want to block, such as Pornography, Gambling, and Drugs/Alcohol. All of these except Chat are blocked by default. The Proxy category, new in this version, is a useful addition: It blocks access to "anonymizer" sites that could be used to subvert Net Nanny's content filtering. Opening up the full list of 30 reveals categories like Games, Religious, and Sports. Besides the expected options to allow or block access for each category, you can choose just to warn the user and offer a choice whether or not to continue—a nice feature.
In addition to setting which categories are blocked for each user, you can fine-tune the blocking process itself. For younger children, you can include a button on the warning dialog that lets them send you an override request if Net Nanny blocks a site they think it shouldn't. You may choose to trust older children with an override password instead; you'll see from the log reports whether they've used it. I like this approach, because it lets you treat the kids with trust rather than control but still start a discussion if their surfing seems to go astray. You can also specify whether this dialog should identify the blocked site's offending category. If you wish you can have Net Nanny redirect to a user-specified Web page rather than display the blocking dialog.
On the other hand, trust may not be in the picture. If your aim is to catch the kids doing what they shouldn't, you can sneakily set it to display just a browser error message. By using the error message mode and hiding the program's tray icon, you can run it in a limited kind of stealth mode. This strategy obviously represents a very different philosophy from trusting kids with their own override. If that's what you need, Net Nanny is flexible enough to supply it.
Sentry At Home lets children send an override request if they believe a site has been blocked in error, and the parent can override the block locally or via remote management. Net Nanny takes this concept significantly further: Your child can request an override for the entire site or just for a particular page, and can also request that the site be assigned to a different category. This category change, if permitted, remains local to your own Net Nanny installation—it doesn't affect the overall database.—Next: Blocking Below the Surface

Besides blocking Web sites with inappropriate content, Net Nanny can cut off Web browsing, IM, chat, newsgroups, or peer-to-peer file sharing at the protocol level. Your teen won't be able to evade IM blocking by switching to a third-party client like Trillian because Net Nanny blocks the IM protocol, not the specific client. Choosing to block Web browsing affects any browser, just as content filtering works in any browser. That's how it should be: Solutions like Sentry At Home, iShield Plus 2.0, or SnoopStick, which block only specific browsers and programs, are too easy to evade. Blocking at such a low level is a powerful technique that might possibly block something it shouldn't—for example, a nonbrowser financial program that needs Web access. If that happens, however, you can override the protocol-based blocking for the specific application.

By default, Net Nanny records all Web-site visits and all conversations using instant messaging services from AOL, Google, Microsoft, MySpace, Yahoo!, and others. You can turn off either type of monitoring for specific users—you surely don't want it to monitor your own account or other adults. Net Nanny also monitors IM at the protocol level, so here again your kids can't escape its view by using a third-party client the way they could under Safe Eyes. It can't record conversations that use a totally Web-based client like Meebo.com or Yahoo! Messenger for the Web, so you may want to cut off access to these by blocking the Chat category. Also, it can't log encrypted protocols like Google Talk. I thought it might be like PC Pandora, which simply skips logging Google Talk. But in testing I found that Net Nanny instead forces Google Talk to forgo encryption. Nice!—Next: Time and Game Control


Time and Game ControlLike most parental-control programs, Net Nanny lets you schedule when and how much your kids can use the Internet. For each child, you can define a weekly schedule in half-hour increments and optionally set a daily or weekly cap on total Internet time. Net Nanny uses Internet time, so unlike Webroot Parental Controls or Bsafe Online it can't be fooled by tweaking the system clock or time zone: Believe me, I tried! Unfortunately, there's no built-in way that your child can appeal for an override to the time scheduler.

Last and definitely least is an option to control access to Internet Games. Unchanged since ContentProtect 2.0, it lets you control access to seven specific obscure Internet games—my kids have never even heard of them! ContentWatch is looking at the possibility of adding rating-based game blocking like that in Vista's built-in parental-control system. Until that happens, Vista users can run both, as Net Nanny is designed for full compatibility with Vista's built-in system.—Next: But I'm at the Office…


But I'm at the Office…
If you were at home all the time you might not even need software to manage the children's computer use. An occasional well-timed shout of "Hey, cut that out!" could well do the job. But you're not home all the time, and Net Nanny takes that into account. Any time it blocks a child's access to a Web site, to the Internet, or to a program type such as IM, it can optionally send an e-mail notification. You can also opt to receive notification when the child gets a warning, requests an override, or uses the override password.

It's easy to have Net Nanny send notifications of all events for all users to a single e-mail address, but you can optionally tune this feature down to the finest level. For each user it can send notification of each event type to a different e-mail address or to multiple addresses—so Mom and Dad can both get the message.
By logging into account management at, netnanny.com you control all aspects of the program's configuration. When you get an e-mail notification of an override request, you can accept or reject it right away. If your teen IMs you saying she's run out of Internet time before she ran out of homework, you can change her profile to offer more time. You'll have to IM her back and tell her to choose "Refresh Profiles", though, or log out and in again. At least this version allows the kids to trigger a refresh; ContentProtect required administrator-level access to do that.
Net Nanny will eventually pick up the new settings even if you don't log in a different user or refresh the profiles. But because remote changes are immediate only if you have cooperation from the kids, you can't reasonably use that feature to tighten up restrictions. Remote changes in Safe Eyes, SnoopStick, and Webroot Parental Controls all take effect within minutes.


Remarkable Reports
Most parental control utilities can monitor Web sites visited, and many also record IM conversations, but Net Nanny outshines all the rest in its presentation of the logged information. From the administrative console, you can request a Web or IM report for the last day, week, fortnight, or month. You can make these reports available on a per-user basis from the remote management console as well.

The Web report starts with a series of graphs: a pie chart of sites visited by category; a bar chart showing sites allowed, blocked and warned; a bar chart of Web time for each user, and a graph of total Internet time for each day. But that's just the start. You can click any element of the Flash-based report to drill down. Click a pie slice for a list of users who viewed sites in that category, and click a user for full details on which sites were visited, when, and for how long. Drill into the Web time chart for a full list of all sites visited by a particular user during the report period. You can also print the charts and detail reports.
In a similar fashion, the IM report offers a pie chart of IM services used, a bar chart breakdown by user, and a graph of time spent on IM each day. Drilling down to the maximum level of detail, you can see the full text of all recorded conversations along with the screen names used and the date and time. Here again you can print the charts and detail reports.
Net Nanny includes a number of other small improvements over ContentProtect. It now has a full help system rather than just a PDF manual. It no longer requires you to define (and remember) a plethora of passwords, all different. And it now sends e-mail notification of new override requests. Kids are now able to refresh the local system with remote profile changes (though I'd like to see changes accepted automatically and immediately). It's an excellent choice for controlling and monitoring what your kids do online.