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Spector Pro 6.0
Spector Pro, a product of SpectroSoft, is primarily a monitoring software, which keeps track on everything that happens on the monitored PC.
The program records and reviews automatically everything your children do on the computer, both on and off line ? including emails, websites visited, keystrokes, MySpace and Facebook activities, online searches, offline program activities, chats and IMs (instant messages software). It notifies you when your kids use inappropriate language or visit sites you deem |
Net Nanny 6.0
Net Nanny is a parental control software by ContentWatch Inc. It is primarily focused on filtering objectionable and offensive content from the internet.
The program has preset monitoring functions, which you can customize to meet your family's unique needs, such as setting different criteria for each child according to their age and maturity.
Net Nanny also blocks popups and cookies, Usenet, HTTPS sites, peer-to-peer (P2P) downloading networks, FTP, forums, emails, chats with predatory language, et |
Ease of Use:
How easy is it for you as a parent to install, configure and use the software?
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Reviews say the Spector Pro is very easy to install and use, and works exactly as advertised. The program is very intuitive and has a streamlined user interface and a very good design.
The recorded information is organized nicely and it is quite easy to see what the monitored children are doing.
The Spector Pro has a great playback setting, which displays the screenshots it takes in the form of a movie.
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User reviews praise Net Nanny 6.0's ease of use as one of its strong points. While it has a very intuitive and smooth interface for parents, it is hard for kids to circumvent.
However, some people have experienced problems with the Net Nanny program. Since the software is very deeply rooted in the computer, it poses a potential risk to the operating system if anything goes wrong. Some reviews pointed to the possibility of Net Nanny locking the operating system in a cycle without a possibility to reset the settings or allowing internet access.
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Customer Support:
What can you expect from the software's customer support? What options are available for you and how much does it cost on top of license fees?
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Technical and customer support are available 24/7, except Christmas day via email and by telephone freephone. The company also provides live chat support through LivePerson. Customer support constantly receives great user reviews.
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Telephone, freephone or email. There may be a charge for phone support.
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Stealth Operation:
Having your children find you monitoring them may be quite awkward. This means that the software you use should be undetectable. How does the software fair in this?
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Spector Pro uses stealth technology that makes it undetectable to the monitored children, and they will not know about it unless you tell them.
The software will not appear in the Windows System Tray, Desktop, Task Manager or Add/Remove Programs Menu, and it cannot be uninstalled without the password you set it up with.
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Net Nanny software is visible to the monitored user.
The program tells the children that they are performing a violation, such as attempting to access a blocked website.
If you want your monitoring and blocking to be invisible to the user, then this software is not suitable for your needs.
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Recording user activity :
What types of user activity can the software record? what can it report to you as a parent?
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Spector Pro automatically tracks and records every single thing that the user does on the computer.- It records every email sent and received ? including deleted emails. Copies of all emails are saved to a hidden location on the PC.
- Every website visited, for how long, and how frequently it is visited.
- Every keystroke entered, including user names and passwords.
- Every activity on MySpace and Facebook
- Every online search.
- Every file download and every program activity including document tracking.
It records and reviews all chats and IM (Instant Messages) activities ? you can either see them as they are typed or read the full text later.
You can play the Screen Snapshot Surveillance recorder like a movie, to see exactly what they do, and in what order.
If you don't want to see every single detail, the "Top 10 Summary Report" feature will give you a summary of the user's most important Internet and PC activities for the past day, week or month - such as who they chat with the most, top 10 visited websites, top searches, etc.
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Unlike Spector Pro, Net Nanny does not record every single activity on the computer, but Net Nanny 6.0 now provides some new activity recording features. Apart from lists of websites visited or attempted, Net Nanny 6.0 provides detailed web activity logs - detailed interactive charts and graphs that show you when, how long and how often your children browse certain websites.
There is also a new IM Recording feature that
records all IMs (instant messages) and allows you to browse full text of all IM conversations from both sides.
Net Nanny does not record emails, keystrokes or social network activity. It also lacks the ability to capture screen shots of activity.
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Remote Management:
The ability to monitor a computer from a location other than the monitored computer itself.
If the monitored computer is in your teenage child's room, you may find it more difficult to have physical access to their computer whenever you want to see what they're doing and why they spend so much time in their room. Remote management lets you use another computer to investigate their actions.
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Apart from email or cell-phone alerts on certain pre-defined events, the Spector Pro software doesn't have remote management tools. The program sends you alerts on keywords and phrases that you specify if these are typed in a chat, Instant Message, web page, email etc.
The alert can be sent to wherever you specify, such as your office email address or your cell phone. However, you will still need to access the "subject" computer to retrieve and review all the recorded information.
Spector Pro does provide remote viewing from any computer within the same internal network, so if you have a local network of two or more computers at home, you can review the activity logs recorded on the monitored computer from a separate computer. You will need to have a license for each monitored computer.
Note that you can also use SpectorSoft's "eBlaster" software to have the recordings emailed to you, but this will double the price of the product.
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The new Net Nanny 6.0 provides remote management tools, which allow you manage internet safety policies from any internet connection. The new Net Nanny 6.0 sends you automatic e-mail, text message and/or mobile alerts on certain events and trigger conditions that you pre-define - such as IMs (instant messaging) or chats containing cyberbullying, offensive language, P2P (peer-to-peer) file downloads, requests to access blocked websites, time control overrides, etc.
You can then login to Net Nanny's remote management console from any Internet enabled computer ? even from work.
Moreover, with Net Nanny 6.0 you can access the features of the child's computer system configuration. You can, for instance, review requests to access certain blocked websites and accept or reject them immediately. Your changes will be synchronized almost instantly.
With the remote management features you can monitor instant messaging from anywhere, and have full access to the same reports that you can view locally. You can also set the program to email you activity reports daily, weekly, or monthly, to any email address you chose.
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Monitoring Older Children:
How does the software monitor older children? How suitable is it for teenagers?
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Spector Pro 6.0 is regarded as highly suitable software for monitoring teens, thanks to its comprehensive monitoring features. This software provides an ability to record and review everything the user does on the computer ? not just blocking unwanted websites.
It also has a warning system that informs you of any inappropriate use of the monitored PC. Every time that a certain keyword that you pre-define (such as "drugs", "nude" etc.) is typed or appears on the website, in an email, instant message, chat and anywhere on the PC, you receive an immediate report with details of when, where and how that keyword was used. You can receive these alerts by email to you home or office address, or by a text message to your cell phone.
According to reviews, these features make the Spector Pro an excellent tool for monitoring adolescent kids' computer activity, on and off the internet.
The program can also be used in a small business to monitor employees and stopping them abusing the internet during work time.
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Net Nanny 6.0 provides more teenage-activity monitoring features than previous versions. It has a good alert system, but it lacks certain monitoring features that the Spector Pro has. Previous versions of the Net Nanny software were focused primarily on content blocking and filtering but offered very limited user activity monitoring. Hence, they were generally perceived as suitable for monitoring children under ten years old and not suitable for teens.
The new Net Nanny 6.0 version, however, has more monitoring features than before, such as recording IMs (instant messages software) and chats which you can read in full. Another feature sends email or text message alerts to parents in the occurrence of certain events (such as cyberbullying, abusive language or predatory behavior on IMs, peer-to-peer file sharing, etc.). These new features make this program more suitable for monitoring teens and not just young children.
Net Nanny 6.0 works with multiple users and allows you to set a separate profile for each family member, using different criteria according to their age or maturity. For example, you can choose whether they have access to specific websites, newsgroups, e-mail, or whether they can download files or use certain applications.
Note however that the social-networking monitoring is still limited and there are less recording features than the Spector Pro. Additionally, Net Nanny does not have the screen snapshot recording feature the Spector Pro has.
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Internet Filtering and Blocking:
What capabilities does the software provide in terms of blocking or filtering Internet content so that your children are not exposed to it? This feature includes the P2P (peer to peer) networks used to exchange files between your children and other people on the Internet.
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Internet filtering and blocking is Spector Pro's weak spot. Although the software does provide some blocking options, their focus is on recording what the user actually does on the computer, on and off line.
Spector Pro provides you with the list of visited websites and also valuable information such as: the time of the last visit, duration of time spent on the website, active time on website, number and frequency of visits to the website, etc.
If you see on that list a website you want to block, you can easily do that with a click of a button. You can also create your own list of websites to block.
The software lets you block specific internet applications like AOL Instant Messenger from being accessed at all.
Spector Pro has the ability to monitor and record peer-to-peer activity on file sharing programs like Kazaa, Morpheus and Limewire. You will know when these programs are being used, what was searched for and what was downloaded, so you can take appropriate measures and stop or prevent illegal or inappropriate file sharing by your kids.
Note that the software doesn't block or filter peer-to-peer applications automatically.
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If you are mainly interested in internet filtering and content blocking, Net Nanny is a great choice, thanks to its comprehensive filtering mechanisms. Net Nanny blocks pornography, hate sites, questionable chat rooms and other Internet perils. It can be configured to block online game and gambling sites, or to allow installation and playing only computer games with parental ratings that you deem appropriate.
Net Nanny offers a simple set-up assistant to help parents determine what online activities (websites, chat, gaming and social networks) are appropriate to the child based on their age.
Net Nanny 6.0 is able to filter the content of secure websites and it also blocks attempts to get around filtering by blocking secure proxy and encrypted websites (these are websites used to hide browsing activity) Using secure proxy websites is the number one method used by tech-savvy teens to circumvent desktop filters.
Net Nanny can block proxies, but it also has a second line of defense: It filters both secure and non-secure traffic. If the Proxy category isn't blocked or if your child manages to find an unblocked proxy, Net Nanny still does its job. Kids can't fool it by tweaking a Web address to use encryption.
Net Nanny lets parents to create lists of unacceptable or acceptable websites.
The software integrates with search engines such as Google, Yahoo, etc, and ensures that the safe search feature is on. This means your children can't search on a search engine and even see links to blocked sites. This provides better protection against pornographic images, using the search engine's filtering capabilities to augment Net Nanny's.
Net Nanny is able to block content in multiple languages to provide even more internet safety for your family.
Net Nanny 6.0 also has an improved game management feature, which relies on the age-based ratings of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB).
The new feature allows you to independently block games tagged with any of the categories identified by ESRB.
Net Nanny lets you view the list of websites that are being blocked, and you, as an administrator can unblock sites if you think that they should be made accessible.
Net Nanny 6.0 blocks access to specific peer-to-peer downloading networks and applications. There is no filtering or monitoring of the peer-to-peer applications themselves, so you don't know what your children were trying to download if you allow P2P access.
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IM Monitoring:
There are many predators and bullies out there, and the instant messaging programs make it much easier for them to prey. How does the software deal with these IM programs and the chat activity performed through them?
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Spector Pro tracks every user activity on the computer. Part of this is an automatic recording of every chat and IM activity, in AOL chat rooms, AOL Instant Messenger, Google Chat, MSN Messenger, Skype Chat and Yahoo Messenger. Both sides of the full conversation are saved chronologically for your review later.
The program will send you instant alerts to an email or cell phone of your choice, every time a certain keyword or phrase that you pre-define is being typed in an IM or chat.
Another feature for protecting your children from online predators is the Chat Blocking, which you can use to block someone completely from chatting to your children whenever you feel this person may be a potential predator.
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Net Nanny 6.0 can block IM (instant messages) at the protocol level. It supports AIM/ICQ, Jabber/Google, MSN Messenger, MySpace IM and Yahoo, and also Tencent QQ which is popular in China. Net Nanny 6.0 offers two styles of monitoring IMs. One feature is the IM Recording feature, which records the entire IM conversation (on both sides), so you can view it later.
The other feature is IM Monitoring, which reviews and analyses the content of the IMs and checks for potential online predatory behavior (such as attempts to make real-world contact), cyberbullying, or other inappropriate language using a dozen different categories. This feature records only those parts of the conversation that may indicate a problem. The program can handle the quirky spelling often used in IMs.
You can use those features together or separately.
When a potentially harmful IM conversation is detected, Net Nanny will send you an email or a text message alert.
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Social Networks Monitoring:
Social networks such as Facebook, Myspace and others are hugely popular with children, but they are also open for anyone wanting to harm them. What can the software do for you in the social networking sites?
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Spector Pro records all your children's MySpace and Facebook activity so you will know exactly what they are doing.
The software records when they update their profile, upload photos, send messages, interact with their friends (including inviting or accepting invitation from a new friend), view their friends' profiles, etc.
Also, if any of the keywords or phrases that are on the "on alert" list that you create are typed or appear on their social network activity, you will receive an instant detailed warning to your email or cell-phone.
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Net Nanny 6.0 is limited in monitoring social networking. It can monitor the child's Facebook activity, but it depends on your child allowing you to do that through the website..
Basically, this software gives you access to any Facebook profile opened on the child's computer, and you can download profile information (such as friends lists, photo albums, personal descriptions etc.) regardless of where the child chooses to log in and update Facebook from.
However, as mentioned, there's a catch. Your child needs to allow you to do that.
When your children want to login to Facebook from the monitored computer, they get a warning that they must install the ContentWatch Facebook application. If they don't want you to check on their Facebook activity, they can simply chose to reject or uninstall the application and never login from the home computer.
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