What To Look For In Parental Controls & Internet Monitoring Software

The parental control software is not only great for notifying you immediately of any pornographic activity on your home computer, but you can also get detailed reports of how much time is spent online by anyone in your household and the exact characters that have been typed in. However, not all parental control software is created equal. Here are the important criteria in selecting good parental control software.

Invisibility (Cloaking ability)
Monitoring can only be effective if the person that you are monitoring is not aware that he/she is being watched. A normal software application will kick off some process that is visible in the Windows Task Manager. Most kids are computer savvy and they will try to find away to avoid being monitored. If your kids know about the monitoring software, they can find ways to disable the monitoring software. Good monitoring software has the ability to hide the monitoring processes from the computer users.

Data Filtration
It is very easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of data that is being captured by the monitoring software. Lots of these data are not relevant to what we are trying to look for. Some monitoring software have a built-in criteria triggered monitoring. What that mean is that when a certain criteria is met, such as a sexual oriented word is typed, then the monitoring software try to capture all data events. In order to accomplish this criterion triggered events the software will have to monitor all the things that user typed in the keyboard.

Data access
There are 2 types of data access:
a) Remote data access (Web-based & email)
This means:
1. No need to repeatedly access the monitored computer to review recorded data.
2. Keep an eye on things from anywhere.
(Imagine keeping an eye on the kids' Internet activity from your office for instance.)

b) Local data access (on the computer that you are monitoring)
This means that you would need to be physically in front of the computer that you are monitoring. This is secure but not efficient.

Monitoring Capability
You need parental control software that will enable you to see all web sites visited, all email communication for both email sent and received, ability to monitor Instant Messaging / Chat conversations, what music your kids are listening and video they are watching. You should also be able to create a block list of offensive web sites that would not be accessible by your kids.

For more information visit www.WatchRight.com

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