PC Parental Control Software - Guide to Parental Control Software

If you are spinning your heads and not decided yet what pc parental control software to have or what features to look for while buying a parental control software, this article is for you. It will considerably reduce your trauma by listing down all the essential features that is must for any pc parental control software:

Internet Filter: Internet filter is the first safety check that parents can use to prevent children visiting sites not intended for them. You might be aware that there are many sites available that offer adult videos and games based on violence or of sexual nature. PC parental control software must have an internet filter that blocks chat rooms, blogs, IM to keep children safe from the dark side of the internet. Moreover Internet filter should also be able to block content based websites or blogs that deals with hate speeches, adult videos, bomb making recipes etc… Then there are social networking sites which are heaven for online predators and fraudsters to perform identity theft or other heinous crimes. Internet filter should also block such sites. Also, internet filter should block downloading file from peer to peer which is the number one resource of spywares. Depending upon the age of your children you only want internet filter. Here is a guide that will help you to decide which internet filter to buy.

Monitoring: Parental Control must at minimum monitor and log websites accessed by children, log email sent and received, capture both sides of chat conversations, log all keystrokes entered including the password. In addition to that pc parental control software should run in stealth mode, that is unnoticeable to child whose computer is being monitored.

Monitoring feature is essential for teens that knows how to bypass the safety measures that their parents have deployed on their computers. Teens or anyone with sufficient internet knowledge can use technology tools available for free on internet, to circumvent internet filter. Monitoring feature allow parents to monitor their child internet activity and to take precautionary steps. If you already have an internet filter and only looking for monitoring software, here is a guide for you. You can also read my review on I am big brother, which is best affordable monitoring software available in the market.

Time Control: PC Parental Control must allow parents to schedule the internet usage of their children. It helps to curb down the internet addiction among children, and also provides more control to parents. For example, it allow parents to set what times of every day and for how long their children are allowed to be online. Time control feature also reduces the risk of children accessing the internet on their family pc while parents are not at home. This can be achieved by simply setting the time control to block the internet usage for the time parents will not be at home.

Online Predator Alert: Threats from online predators are realistic, online predators are everywhere even on blogs, chat sites, or on social networking sites that appears to be child safe. Most of the pc parental control software comes with a feature that alerts parents in real time either by phone or email, when it suspects that their children is chatting with online predator. This feature also shut downs the application used for conversing with online predator such as Instant Messenger.

Remote Monitoring: With remote monitoring capability, parents can go to internet from anywhere, open a web browser, access their account and see everything that their children are doing online either in real time or on a specified period of time. Some pc parental control software even allow parents to remotely intervene, i.e allowing parents to send a message to their children or shutting down the application even computer that their children are using in real time.

I've found that all the above mentioned features are covered in WebWatcher. You can read my review on WebWatcher by clicking here.

In the end I like to emphasize that internet safety starts at home, parents not only have to educate children about internet safety, but must also take all the important computer safety measures. This does not by any means undermine the importance of parental control software.

Related Articles:

Return From Features of PC Parental Control Software To Parental Control Software Main Page