Protect Your Kids Online with Free Norton OnlineFamily

Sara Morgan — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:00:59 +0000

I am a mother of three children under the age of 12. Back when I was a kid, my parents only had to warn me about not taking candy from strangers, but parents these days have to be ever-vigilant (even when the kids are supposedly safe at home). These days children who spend any time online are vulnerable to not only impressionable material, but sick and twisted individuals.

There are tons of software packages out there that allow you to monitor and control your kids’ internet usage, but I have found none as complete and easy to use as OnlineFamily by Norton. It allows you to not only monitor what web sites your kids are visiting, but also limit their total computer time, restrict where they can go, supervise their social web site activities, and even protect their personal information. And the best part is that the interface is dead easy to use (even if you are technically challenged). If you sign-up now, you can get the service for free until January of 2010.

To get started, click here to sign up and download the software. After registering, you will be asked for the names and ages of each child you want to monitor.

Once you have setup the kids, you can download the software and install it on each of the machines you wish to monitor (don’t forget laptops). They provide both a Windows and a Mac version.

Installing it on the kids’ PC is quick and easy. If you have not already setup a separate user account for each kid and they all use the same machine, do this before you install the software. Unless they separate accounts, you will not be able to determine who did what.

When you install the software, it will ask you to specify how each family member logs in. If your kids all use the same PC, then you can use an Administrator account to install the software and select not to monitor that account. Each kid would then have a standard account and each of those will be monitored separately.

Once it is all setup, you can login to the service and start monitoring and managing your childrens’ activities. Keep in mind that there is a 5 to 10 minute delay between the time a web site is browsed on the kids PC and the activity shows up in your browser window. This one got me when I was testing to make sure it worked.

If you want, you can just use the default house rules, which seemed pretty good to me. Alternatively, you can use the Settings menu to define all sorts of rules specific to your situation. For example, you can specify who allowed to instant message your children. You can also monitor whether your child exposes sensitive information on social networking sites. And most importantly, you can choose the activities in which you want to be notified (by phone or email).

Norton provides a pretty thorough and useful help file which you can access online. This includes a nice video that you might want to check out, it may be found on the sign-up page.

Let us know if you tried Norton’s OnlineFamily and tell us what you think. Or let us know if you think any other online software tools are better.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Modify Vista’s Horrible Prompts With Norton’s UAC Tool

Karl L. Gechlik — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:01:04 +0000

I have been talking a lot about User Access Control (UAC) lately. I was quoted in the New York Times last week about some of Vista’s fumbles and it brought me back to how bad the UAC interface really is. I have had it disabled for some time now and you can find instructions on how to disable UAC here on MakeUseOf. BUT if you think about the UAC like a safety on a pistol, by disabling it you are “living on the edge” and with a bigger chance of an accident taking place.

So if you don’t want to risk shooting yourself in the foot (or somewhere a little more private) then you should check out Norton’s UAC Tool for free here.

If you are not familiar with Vista’s User Access Control ‘feature’ check out Wikipedia’s definition:

User Account Control (UAC) is a technology and security infrastructure introduced with Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system. It aims to improve the security of Microsoft Windows by limiting application software to standard user privileges until an administrator authorizes an increase in privilege level. In this way, only applications that the user trusts receive higher privileges, and malware should be kept from receiving the privileges necessary to compromise the operating system. In other words, a user account may have administrator privileges assigned to it, but applications that the user runs do not also have those privileges unless they are approved beforehand or the user explicitly authorizes it to have higher privileges.

By disabling the UAC you also disable certain features that Norton makes use of. So Norton came out with a tool that makes you a little less likely to disable the UAC ‘feature’. Choose your location and start your download.

Next choose your version. x86 for 32 bit and the 64 for 64 bit. If you are unsure just grab the x86 file as seen below:

Next you will want to let it install and then enable it to replace the normal UAC pop-ups like seen below:

That’s all there is to it! Pretty simple huh? Check out what Norton has to say about their new Beta product:

The User Account Control tool has been designed to replace the Vista UAC, to simultaneously make your system more secure while significantly improving user-friendliness.

By default, any application launched by an administrator is running with a filtered, standard user access token. When the administrator attempts to perform a task, the UAC prompts the user to approve the action. This can lead to poor user experiences because the prompts can be slow to display, and appear frequently and without warning. What’s more, because the UAC may give a false sense of security since other processes can still access the desktop, it actually raises security concerns.

The net effect is that many users find the UAC security clearance and prompting process annoying, especially those who are a computer’s only user and have all the latest Norton Internet Security software installed and updated.

The User Account Control tool will collect user input as well as information on applications causing prompts. The data will be processed to improve the comprehensiveness and robustness of the white list, which will be updatable while running the tool online.

So in short by disabling the UAC you also disable certain features that Norton makes use of. So Norton came out with a tool that makes the UAC easier for you and computing safer for everyone. Wait a minute and it’s free….

Why is it free you might ask?

That is exactly what I was wondering so I decided to dive in a little deeper and check it out. It turns out Norton is willing to hook you up and remember your clicks, making that UAC prompt show up less in exchange for data.

They will collect information on how often and what causes your UAC to pop up. This time Norton sure showed Microsoft how it’s done! You can see from the pictures above and below HUGE improvements over the initial UAC interface.

(Above: New UAC From Norton Labs)

(Above: Old Microsoft UAC Interface.)

The best feature Straight from Norton’s Website:

Q: So… what does this replacement offer me?

A: Currently, the Norton Labs’ UAC replacement offers a “Do not ask me again” option on each prompt making it very easy for the user to squelch individual prompts without fully disabling UAC. Further, the Norton Labs’ UAC replacement displays the prompts in a slightly different way from how Microsoft chose to do it. We feel that our prompts provide a much clearer view of the ratings for the prompting application.

Wow this all looks almost too good to be true! So I went in and perused their privacy policy and everything seems to be on the up and up. This is a lot better than disabling UAC and safer than any of the registry hacks around. Way to go Norton!

How do you deal with the UAC? Are you disabling it, living with it or finding another way around it all together? Let us know in the comments!