Verdict
A powerful application that could prove useful, as long as it's used for protection rather than control.Review Rating:
Type: Time limited demo
Platform: Windows XP
Manufacturer: BioNet Systems
Size: 489KB
Number of Downloads: 1050
Price: $ 39.95
Net Nanny software is designed to control users' access to unsavoury elements of the internet, but also includes features to restrict a user's access to various other elements, such as applications, newsgroups etc.
A comprehensive list of blocked websites is provided upon installation, and free downloads are constantly available to keep the list as up-to-date as possible. Alternatively, you can create your own restricted lists.
Conversely, lists of permitted sites can be created if total control of a user's behaviour is more your style.
A default configuration is provided that blocks sites on the Net Nanny restricted list and sites containing five or more objectionable words. It also masks undesirable words in sites, chat and email.
Up to 12 users can have their own set of controls, and it is possible to control which websites they can view, what applications they can run (including games, instant messengers and P2P software), and the newsgroups and chatrooms they can access.
The program is password-protected to ensure your settings aren't tampered with.
Do you agree?
OK in places but flawed
I downloaded the trial version of Netnanny as it had a good online review elsewhere. It certainly does what it says on the box (ie block certain websites which have various banned words), but it lacks subtlety. The website for the Australian beer XXXX - cannot be viewed eventhough other alcohol websites can and any website with a name starting with a banned word is also blocked. Try and find out about a respected mathematician Ken Dykema and Netnanny will froth at the mouth at the idea of it. As I am in the UK, I found the sites that it blocked were mainly US based and false errors as the above where common - even the BBC caused it problems, as it would allow a page to be seen but report some of the scripts on it as coming from a banned site. It does give an Administrative option of seeing the banned sites so that parents can check, but with so many false alarms and no way of checking remotely, it would be a constant interaction with the host computer.
Posted by Steve Howcroft, 08 Mar 2006