What Features Do You Need In Parental Control Software?

Now that you understand why you need to have parental control over your childrens Internet access it's time to take a look at exactly what parental control software does and what you should be looking for when shopping for parental control software. Here's a quick breakdown of the different features you need to be looking for.

Background Operation
The software has to operate in the background so that your kids can't see it. It also needs to be secure so that your kids can't just disable it as a service or uninstall it.

Ease of Use
It needs to be easy to set-up and maintain. There's no point in using parental control software that needs a degree in quantum physics to get it working properly.

Content Filtering
The software needs to automatically block websites with specific types of content and images. This saves you having to worry about them visiting "those" types of sites.

Programs Access Block
You should be able to prevent certain programs from launching in the first place like messenger programs (MSN, AIM, GTalk etc). If your kids can't access these programs then you have more peace of mind.

E-mail Control/Logging
This type of feature allows you to keep a lot of all e-mail that your kids have sent or received so you can see exactly who they were chatting to and what was said.

Online Timer
This is a must-have for most packages. Basically you can set the exact times that your kids can be online and what they can do. So say for example they could only get online between 6pm and 8pm each evening but they're only allowed basic website access. This feature means your kids can only be online when you're there to monitor them (actual parents are the best type of parental control).

URL Blocking
This allows you to simply block website addresses that you don't want your kids accessing. So if you find them visiting certain websites that they shouldn't then URL blocking means they'll never see that website again.

Chat Logging
One of the most dangerous places for kids to be when online is in chat rooms or using chat programs. If you do allow them to use chatrooms and messenging programs then you need the ability to be able to read back over what they were saying and who they were chatting to.

Keyboard logging
This keeps a record of every single thing that was typed on the keyboard - from website URLs to specific keywords to entire conversations and e-mails. Your kids will never know this is happening.

Website History
This feature will keep a log of all the websites that your kids have visited so you can check later on and block those websites manually if you have to.