LookSmart Net Nanny 5.0 Parental Control Software

by LookSmart

Product Features

• The expanded set of Can't Go and Can Go Websites keep your children's eye away from material that parents may find objectionable
• New blocking software prevents cookies and pop-up ads from infesting your screen & memory
• Track activity remotely by email, and submit possibly objectionable Websites for inclusion into the Net Nanny database
• Specify daily time limits for browsing online
• Block file sharing and data transfer clients

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000070MQV
• Item model number: 1575956888
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 7, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 1.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,318 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #11 in Software > Computer Security > Parental Control
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Net Nanny provides you with a broad set of Internet safety tools. It allows you to safeguard your privacy, stop pornography and other objectionable material from coming into your home, and limit your children's online activities.

Net Nanny lets you filter and block Web sites by URL or keyword, and filter content in e-mail, IRC chat, and newsgroups. Limit access to your PC by time of day and total amount of connect time, or restrict access to online activities (chat, instant messengers, games, file sharing). Protect confidential information, block pop-up and pop-under advertisements, and block Internet cookies. You can also monitor Internet activity for an individual, a group, or all users.

Net Nanny is a First Amendment-friendly Internet filtering application--users have complete access to the program's database of Web sites, keywords, and Internet-enabled applications.

Product Description

With Net Nanny 5, responsible adults will take charge of their children's safety while they explore online! Set up a kiosk mode, for a computer that's used by many -- each person will get their own level of access to the Internet Enhanced logging and reporting tools, plus log rotation for preventing hard disk failure Make sure your children view appropriate content when going online with Net Nanny!

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

83 of 87 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Loaded with features but poor on delivery, September 27, 2003

By 

S. Lawrenz "Lendorien" (Milwaukee, WI) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: LookSmart Net Nanny 5.0 Parental Control Software (CD-ROM)

If name recognition was all that mattered, Net Nanny would win hands down. It is probably the best known parental control software out there.

But as with anything, name isn't everything.

At first glance, Net nanny is quite impressive. It has a host of features that any parent, seeking to protect their children from pornography and predators on the internet, would find useful. Among them are:

Site blocking, to prevent kids for accessing sites with objectionable or pornographic content. (Net Nanny Contains a long list of prohibited sites which users may add to the list if they wish.); E-mail and Instant Messenger monitoring, to protect against predators; blocking of Newsgroups and file sharing clients; Content blocking and censoring to prevent kids from reading content with objectionable language, including a list of words users can add to; and Internet usage blocking to block out when a child may or may not use the internet. It even has a feature to prevent kids from changing the computer's clock to get around it.

All of these features seemed to work fine for the most part (see below). Web sites on the restricted list were indeed blocked, and the content censoring worked quite well. Net Nanny automatically censors objectionable language as the web pages load, replacing restricted words with Number signs: ########.

Net Nanny's features all are quite useful, but Net Nanny has some downsides more than make up for them. For the record, my computer is an AMD Athlon XP 2100 running Windows 98.

One of the first things I noticed when I started using Net Nanny was that my internet connection suddenly began to lag. The computer I used it on is connected to dial-up, which is not quick to begin with. With Net Nanny installed, pages that had taken 3 seconds to come up before were taking 10 to 15 seconds longer, sometimes more. While this might not seem like much, when a user is doing browsing or web searches, this lag time can add up quickly.

In addition, some web pages didn't even come up at all, instead showing a blank internet window, causing me to have to hit the refresh button to get the page to load properly. This wasn't for sites with objectionable content; this was for normal sites that Net Nanny should have had no problem with. While this problem didn't happen for most page loads, it happened often enough that it became a nuisance.

What was even worse than clean sites not loading properly was Net Nanny's tendency to allow pages to be shown, even though they had objectionable content. Net Nanny would give a warning message and proceed to load the page anyway. Sometimes it would display the message on a completely innocent website with no objectionable content at all, leaving me bewildered, wondering what was wrong with it. This only happened with sites that were not on Net Nanny's list of restricted sites. Restricted sites WERE blocked properly, but since sites with objectionable content on the net are endless, this understandably made me wonder if it was working properly. I'm not sure if this was an intentional design feature (to get around blocking innocent sites l;ike news reports, etc) or a flaw in the program itself.

Another issue I came across is that Net Nanny appears to slow down the computer altogether. Whenever the machine accessed the internet, my mouse stuttered across the screen. Other programs acted in much the same manner, making multitasking difficult and annoyingly jumpy. This problem was perhaps the most aggravating of what I've listed so far, and enough to make me uninstall the program.

Worst of all, now that I've removed Net Nanny from my computer, some of these issues are still occuring. I had no problem prior to installing Net Nanny, so I can only assume it left pieces of itself on my computer.

Bottom line, look for a parental control program other than Net Nanny. It's not worth the aggravation. I know that I wish I'd checked for reviews before I bought it. It seems that I'm not alone with these issues.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Does it really do what it says?, November 8, 2004

By 

Akiko Fukada (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: LookSmart Net Nanny 5.0 Parental Control Software (CD-ROM)

I got Net Nanny to test and see whether it really blocks "surprises" from teen and children. So, I set up the account with restricted access to the internet. The level was about 75% restricted. When I opened some sites, it was a surprise indeed. I was able to open Playboy.com with ease and navigate. On the other hand, my research group website was blocked and so was The Economist website!!

I am sure there are pop-ups and links on websites which can lead a child to sites like Playboy. They DO have the option of adding websites to their "restricted websites" page but Net Nanny has not done her homework if a well-known site like playboy is not blocked!! I wonder what other websites remain to be blocked.

(...)

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Waste of Money, September 16, 2004

By 

Scrap Slow (Dayton, Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: LookSmart Net Nanny 5.0 Parental Control Software (CD-ROM)

This software does not work on my Windows XP operating system. A call to the Help Desk costs $19.95: almost as much as the original software cost! I strongly regret buying this. I had high hopes that I would be able to control the amount of time my teenage daughter spends on the computer while I am at work, but this tool is not the solution.