Care4Teen is a free internet censor program for parents to monitor and protect kids online. Teens and children can get in quite a bit of trouble on the Internet if they aren’t monitored carefully. This doesn’t mean watching over their shoulders every second that they’re on the computer, though. The best option is an Internet censoring program, such as Care4Teen.
Fast Download, Easy Installation of this internet censor program
The Care4Teen download is quite small because most of the program resides on the Care4Teen servers. Installation and setup is quick and easy. Prior to downloading the program, you’ll be required to create an account with a username and password. This process is easy and straightforward.
Once the installation completes, you’ll be requested to reboot your computer, since the executable acts as a firewall. This means that as your computer communicates with internet servers, the software reviews the data being sent and received and blocks inappropriate content, based upon a database residing on the Care4Teen servers.
Multiple Program Options available with this internet censor program
You have two main options for how the program runs. These are restricted and unrestricted modes. In restricted mode, the program is supposed to block content that you would find objectionable. The problem here is, when I was checking the program out, I made a point of searching for content of a pornographic nature and the program did nothing to stop my doing so. Even worse, when I went to some of the pages that came up in my search, the program did nothing. To me, this means the program doesn’t work as advertised. In unrestricted mode, the program is supposed to allow the user to view whatever content they request. However, the program will take screenshots every so often and every few minutes will record a short video showing what the user is seeing. This feature worked properly as I was putting the software through its paces.
Server-Side Database Incomplete
As I stated above, I made a point of visiting a number of sites that most parents of adolescents and teens wouldn’t want their children visiting. But the program failed completely in blocking these sites. Both the meta data and the site name included the words porn and pornography. This means that either the client installed on my computer wasn’t communicating properly with the database on Care4Teen servers, the database wasn’t communicating, or the internet censor software wasn’t written right.
Internet is never a safe place when it can compromise the safety of your kids. But there are many free parental control software available to manage and monitor your kid’s online activity.
Here is definition of Parental Control Software from Wikipedia:
Parental controls provide parents with automated tools to help protect their children and set restrictions while using devices and services…
…controlling the content which the child views on a device connected to the Internet, or limiting the amount of time they can use their device.
Basically, a parental control software lets you manage what type of activities can your kid do online, which applications or websites your kids can work with, and even manage how much time your kid can work online.
A secondary feature of such free parental control software is to report to you what your kids do online, so that you can see that they have not managed to bypass the restrictions imposed by you.
OnlineFamily.Norton is a freeware that effectively blocks bad sites, controls time on the computer, supervises chat and reports on all the actions taken online through the system.
OnlineFamily.Norton is a good parental control freeware that provides an option to set parental control over what content a child can access. The restriction can be customized to notify a strict No-Access to a simple email notification to the parent whenever the child accesses the site.
It reports on how long a particular site was used, what search query was used by the child to browse through the site etc. Different controls can be set based on the age of your child.
Rather than creating an adversary relationship with the child, this software can be used to encourage a good talk between the parent and the child. Find OnlineFamily.Norton here. Also check this video tutorial about how to use OnlineFamily.Norton.
Windows Live Family Safety is a free parental control software which lets you control and monitor the activity of your kids. You can install Windows Live Family Safety Filter on every computer that your child use and it can limit the searches, or block and allow websites, or monitoring IM messenger or hotmail etc.
The software might already be installed in your system if you are using Windows 7. Otherwise download and install the tool. Have a Windows Live ID and setting up controls or filters are absolutely easy. Once installed, every time when you try to access a site, the proxy server will filter the traffic to that account. Windows Live Family Safety is a part of Windows Live suite, that also includes Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Writer, and Windows Live Movie Maker.
Windows Live Family Safety is a brilliant choice for those who want to monitor their child’s online access. Find Windows Live Family Safety tool by following the link.
KidZui browser is another freeware that in my opinion provides best parental control features for young kids. Kidzui protects your kid from questionable or indecent websites. Once the parent creates his/her account, they can set the child’s account. Based on the age group that the child fit in, KidZui offers a wonderful multimedia experience for them.
KidZui is not filter driven. The contents that are available with KidZui are already approved by the admin based on a whitelist database.
Though I felt that KidZui can’t be given a high rating for older kids as it’s too restrictive for them, it’s a good choice for your younger ones. Reach out KidZui through the link.
4. K9 Web Protection
K9 Web Protection is yet another easy to use free internet filter tool. It blocks offensive contents, and those sites detected as potential malware threats.
Download and install K9 Web Protection. You need to have an activation key to install the software. Your password is the key for every action and you need to remember it even if you want to uninstall the K9 Web Protection tool.
You can also block unwanted image contents from popping up in the site your kids browse. Just the images will not be shown but they are free to browse. But its functionality is limited with web surfing, as chat monitoring does not come with this tool. Avail free K9 Web Protection services by following the link.
5. Parental Control Bar
Parental Control Bar is a free content filter that adds on to your browser. It’s very easy to install and work with. You just need to remember your password.
But the tool only works with the newer versions of IE. The picture below shows the control bar that a parent will have access to. There are pre-labeled contents that Parental Control Bar can block. You can add or modify contents of your own for better filtering.
Though this software can’t be promoted as a good option over the others, it is still good with young kids. Find out more about Parental Control Bar through this link.
Conclusion
Parenting in this age of internet is a challenging task. But these free parental control tools will help you stop watching over your kid’s shoulder! Monitoring cannot always be equated to spying as long as you draw a strict line between these two. Communicate with your child that you are monitoring and give them their freedom in a safe internet zone.
Here is a small video tutorial that explains how to configure and use OnlineFamily.Norton. This is a free software from Norton to monitor and manage online activities of your kids. You can create separate settings for each kid.
There are lot of parental controls available out there that help you manage the content that your kids can see online. However, most of them rely on some sort of content management from you as a parent. You need select the category of websites that your kids can see, and the websites that you kid can navigate to. This makes them pretty cumbersome to use.
A simple solution to that problem is Kidzui. It is a free browser that is specially made for kids of ages 13 and below. Kidzui itself maintains a list of websites, games, and videos that are safe for kids. These websites/games/videos have been approved by parents like you. So, when your kid browses the internet using Kidzui, you can be sure that he/she is visiting only the sites that are safe, and it takes the burden completely off from you regarding managing the content that your kids can see online. Kidzui has more than 2 million approved websites/games/videos, so your kids would not complain of not enough content to browse.
Kidzui is completely full featured, and addresses all the aspects of safe web browsing for kids:
Safe Search for Kids
Search is the area that is sometimes most difficult to manage. Even if your kids search for a completely appropriate term for kids, still it is sometimes possible that search engines list non-related, and inappropriate results. This can sometimes tempt your kids to navigate to those websites. To address this, Kidzui comes with a built-in search engine. When your kids type some search phrase, Kidzui shows the results that are from approved results only. This ensures that your kid can browse only safe content, and not fall in the trap of bad websites. The content that kids see on Kidzui is relevant and appropriate for their age and interest.
Kidzui has some other interesting features also for search:
When your kid starts typing, Kidzui auto completes search terms, and ranks them in order of popularity among kids.
With the suggested search results, Kidzui also displays a visual image that helps your kid identify what they are searching for.
Kidzui provides spelling suggestions to help your kids complete their search terms.
Related channels are displayed along with the search results. This helps kid in exploring further content related to their interest.
Safe Browsing for Kids
The strongest aspect of Kidzui is that it has a database of over 2 million websites/games/videos that your kids can browse. All this content is approved by parents and teachers, which ensures that the content is completely appropriate, and of interest for your kids. Apart from the fact that kids browse only safe content, Kidzui also helps them in learning because they are encourage to explore other content that kids like.
Kidzui provides lot of features to help your kids navigate through this content:
Kidzui provides channels for popular content. Your kids can save their channels when they navigate through content. The channels will display on their home page, and new content is added to channels daily.
Kidzui home page displays popular content that other kids around the world find interesting. Kidzui editors also post interesting websites and content on Kidzui home page to help your kids discover and explore new content.
Kids can add their favorite websites / games/ videos to their Favorites section, and easily access them anytime.
Kidzui maintains a very comprehensive history of the content that your kids browse. They can access this history anytime, and explore that content again.
Kids can even tag content as they browse, and express their opinion about content.
Kids can easily share the content with their friends.
Social Networking
Once parents start regulating online activities of their kids, one of the biggest complaint that they get is that kids are not able to participate in social networking websites, such as MySpace and Facebook. Kidzui manages that aspect too. Kidzui provides its own social networking community for kids. Each kid can create their page in that community called MyKidZui page. Kids can add their friends to that page. After that, they can see when their friends came online, and share the tagged content with them.
Here are some of the features that Kidzui online community provides:
Kids can add and block friends.
Kids can share content with friends. All such shared content appears in their Inbox.
Ping friends to say “Hi”
See friends come online and their interests.
Kidzui does not allows any written text / chat / email in this online community. This ensures that even if some wrong persons creates an online page in Kidzui, they won’t be able to email or chat with your kids.
Kidzui even sends you a weekly report of your kids activities online. I wish Kidzui had some better online account management, like Windows Live Family Safety has.
As would be obvious from above, Kidzui is really a very comprehensive way to ensure that your kids browse only safe content online. It not only ensures that the content that your kids see is safe, it also promotes their curiosity by showing them other content that kids like. This means safe growth of the knowledge of your kids.
Kidzui is completely free. Kidzui is natively available for Windows, and Mac. Kidzui is also available as a browser add-in for Firefox. This means Kidzui can be used in Linux as well, by installing it in your Firefox browser in Linux. Love it!
Home Page: Click Here Download (Free): Click Here Works With: Windows, Mac, Linux Free / Paid: Free
