Customer Reviews

LookSmart Net Nanny 5.0 Parental Control Software

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

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.

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.

(...)

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.

Great software for kids.

I got this software in order to keep my kids safe from the dangers of the internet.

One excellent aspect of this program is that it disconnects from ALL internet acticity at the specified times. Other applications (such as Cyber Patrol) only stop web page surfing, but Net Nanny 5 stops activity to MSN, Yahoo messengers etc.

One slight problem is that the program recognized that I was entering a 'dodgy' site and told me that downloading would be stopped. But it carried on.

However, you can get sent daily or weekly reports on any activities. You can also record chat sessions, or only record them when illegal words have been entered.

Download the free 15 day trial first.

Hope this helps.

After downloading this software, there was a noticeable negative impact to our computer. Lock ups almost constantly, slow internet speed, and even slower response on other PC applications that should not have been impacted by this program. We were running this on a Windows 98 OS with a PIII 600mhz computer and 128m RAM. Rather disappointing.

I like this program's features but not at the expense of having to re-boot my computer constantly. I'd look elsewhere for a good Internet Protection software program.

Beware! I'm a teenager whose parents set this program up to protect me. It's a nightmare! It constantly pops up messages that say a site is inappropriate for me, but then it lets me in anyway. There usually is absolutely nothing bad about the site, either. Sometimes it lets me into sites that I do think are bad without complaints. Net Nanny will also display its logo across the whole screen saying the site is blocked, but let me in if I reload the site! Also, it will block out sites that I know aren't bad because it had let me into the site before. The worse thing of all, however, has to be the fact that Net Nanny will delete its memory. My father told it to allow me into a site, but then it would begin to complain. When we checked, its memory was cleaned out. It deleted its own memory! My parents, thankfully, let me have an adult's log. It sometimes blocks adults out of sites! I've seen it block my mother out of credit union sites. It also will display messages that say 'Net Nanny cannot begin filtering until someone logs in.' But someone IS logged in!

Beware!

The problem I've had with the software is that once you setup a user and the user goes to a blocked site, it stops the browser from working altogether. You have to reboot the entire computer once a user tries to access a rejected site. This software is a waste of money. You should consider other alternative like CyberSitter. The technical support for this product is inferior as well. You have the option for pay-per-incident (which means you pay for technical support even though you already paid for the worthless product) or you can email tech support for free but it takes a minimum of 2 days to receive a reply and the quality of service through email is horrible. They don't even understand their own product. Buyer beware.

It's nasty out there. I've tried other programs which were cumbersome. Net Nanny 5.0 is extremely easy to set up and very flexible in its configuration. It can filter from preset lists of objectionable sites or can be user adjusted. It can limit internet time usage to avoid hours of mindless surfing. It may cause some minor, but perceptable slowing, but it is worth the peace of mind. The best 30 bucks you'll spend if you have children who use the internet.

This program is awful. It is not worth the money. My parents bought this programme for me and my younger brother, and I do not think its worth it. Since then, they have turned it off my user and told me the password, so I use it for my brother- but say when I was using word to write a world war two project, and I typed in "bomb" it closed the program down, and when I typed in the password, nothing happens. It just closes the program down and wont let me back in. I dont reccomed buying this programme! There is alot of better programmes which are cheaper!

Seeing is believing. Download the 15 day trail. You will encounter a user friendly program with lots of useful features... However, when it is running your internet speed will drop to a pathetic crawl. It's a nice program with lots of theoretical potential that is not functionally useful. Therefore, it is a waste of money and hard drive space. Programs should be judged based on usability not features. Two big thumbs down for Net Nanny.