Pros & Cons
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- Can install on up to 3 Macs or PCs.
- Category-based Web filtering blocks HTTPS sites.
- Blocks inappropriate YouTube videos; blocks TV/movie clips based on ratings.
- IM and e-mail monitoring.
- Warns when kids post private information online.
- Parental notification via e-mail, phone, or text.
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- Vulnerable to certain hacks.
- Local and online activity reports mutually exclusive.
- Online activity reports lack detail.
- Program blocking easily defeated.
Safe Eyes 6.0 Specs
| OS Compatibility: | Windows 7 |
| OS Compatibility: | Windows Vista |
| OS Compatibility: | Windows XP |
| Tech Support: | 24/7 toll-free phone support |
| Tech Support: | |
| Tech Support: | online |
| Type: | Personal |
| Type: | Professional |
Parental control products adhere to a wide range of philosophies. Some, like 
) and ), force the kids to behave by reporting every little action to Mom and Dad. At the other end of the spectrum, products like ) emphasize parent-child communication over rigid control. Most fall in between, attempting to keep the kids from accidentally or deliberately doing things they shouldn't without being too obtrusive. With the release of Safe Eyes 6.0 ($49.95 direct for 3 licenses) InternetSafety.com is edging toward the communication-centric style, though it retains its protective features.
Safe Eyes now calls itself a "family Internet manager." Its new UI emphasizes things family members like to do on the computer, not on limiting what they do. When parents log in with the Administrator password, the family summary page lists topics such as Web sites, videos, music, instant messaging, games, and so on, rather than focusing on content filtering, program blocking, and so on.
The new interface is smoother and less busy, with an unusual "slide-in" style as you switch between different pages of settings. Safe Eyes works under both the Mac and Windows platforms, so it includes built-in help pages rather than using either platform's standard help system. Unlike OnlineFamily.Norton, whose Mac version omits some features, Safe Eyes supports both platforms equally.
Unique User Profiles
You can install Safe Eyes on three PCs or Macs in your household, and the user profiles you define are global. In fact, user profile names must be unique in the whole Safe Eyes system, so those with common names will need to get inventive. Safe Eyes does impose a limit of 10 profiles—most products let you create as many as you like. If your last name is Duggar, some of your kids may have to share profiles, but for the vast majority of users this limitation is irrelevant.
On creating new profiles you pre-configure default settings by choosing age ranges or by copying settings from existing users. Safe Eyes won't automatically connect profiles to Windows user accounts the way 
) will. However, you get almost the same effect if each child logs into Windows, logs into Safe Eyes, and checks the "save my username and password" box.
The family summary page offers an overview of settings for each account, including the parental administrator account, and you can make high-level changes by clicking summary items. For example, you'll almost certainly want to change the Activity Reports setting to Off for the parent account so your own activities aren't recorded. For fine-grained configuration changes, click one of the topics such as Web sites, games, or e-mail.
Web Filtering and Search
Safe Eyes can block Web sites matching three dozen categories, but you don't have to make three dozen decisions. Your choice of age range automatically pre-configures categories to block; you can also choose Low, Medium or High filtering at the summary page. If you do want to make custom choices clicking each category displays a clear description. OnlineFamily.Norton and Net Nanny include options to just warn older kids when they try to reach "bad" sites, letting them choose whether to continue. In Safe Eyes, the choice is simpler—block or don't.
For each user you can configure Safe Eyes to force Safe Search on popular search portals. OnlineFamily.Norton has a similar feature; Net Nanny automatically forces Safe Search if you choose to block Pornography. Safe Eyes also tracks and reports search terms, and parents can specifically choose to block searches including profanity, sexually suggestive terms, or user-defined keywords.
Safe Eyes uses a database to match Web sites with categories and keeps that database current, but it doesn't have Net Nanny's powerful real-time content analysis. The difference is evident on Web sites that include both acceptable and inappropriate content. Net Nanny blocked only the inappropriate stories on a short-story site and only the "adult" cartoons on a cartoon site; Safe Eyes blocked all on the short-stories and none of the cartoons.—
Some parental control systems can't handle HTTPS sites, but Safe Eyes successfully blocks even secure sites that match banned categories. In particular, it blocks secure anonymizing proxies. The "loophole" category for these sites doesn't even appear in the category list, so parents can't accidentally turn it off. If kids manage to connect through a localhost proxy utility or secure anonymizing proxy Safe Eyes, can't filter their surfing. Net Nanny is tougher. It blocks the use of localhost proxies, and even if kids manage to connect via secure anonymizing proxies it can still filter the secure traffic.
Parental control systems that rely on Layered Service Provider (LSP) technology can be disabled using a specific command-line instruction from a Windows account with Administrator privilege. Like ), Safe Eyes is vulnerable to this attack. Net Nanny and OnlineFamily.Norton aren't. It's too bad, because Safe Eyes almost defends itself against this attack. After the reboot that's a required element of the LSP attack, Safe Eyes reports the problem and asks whether to fix or ignore it. Why ask? Budding hackers will choose ignore and proceed to surf without filtering or monitoring by Safe Eyes.
Videos and Music
Kids can see just about anything on YouTube, from school-related news items to shocking porn. Blocking the whole site to keep them away from the bad stuff isn't smart. Safe Eyes filters out inappropriate YouTube videos whether they appear on the site itself or embedded elsewhere. To determine whether videos are inappropriate Sage Eyes checks metadata, tags, titles, and YouTube's own "inappropriate content" flag. Safe Eyes can also block non-browser media players that might circumvent its filtering. Net Nanny gets a similar effect using its real-time content analysis but doesn't specifically target videos.
Safe Eyes also filters movie and TV clips based on their MPAA movie rating or FCC TV rating. For each child, you can limit viewing to G and TV-G, PG and TV-PG or PG-13 and TV-14. Safe Eyes gathers rating information from various sources and manages video downloads on many Web sites, including ), ABC, NBC, FOX, and ). In the same way it forces Safe Search, it can keep the kids from turning off the iTunes feature that blocks songs with explicit lyrics.
The activity report lists all blocked and watched videos. For each video Safe Eyes displays summary information and a thumbnail; parents can click the thumbnail to see what kids have been watching.
Instant Messaging and E-mail
The coolest kids don't use e-mail—it's so old-fashioned! Even IM is giving way to social networking chat or in-game conversations. But if you need to control children's e-mail communications Safe Eyes is uniquely equipped to handle that task. Kids can create endless Web-based e-mail accounts, so Safe Eyes can block Web-based mail completely. As for standard POP3/SMTP e-mail, Safe Eyes can block messages from all addresses except those whitelisted by parents and report on both blocked and allowed messages.
IM control in Safe Eyes doesn't yet extend to Facebook or MySpace chat, but it can block or monitor AIM/ICQ, MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger. This feature works at the protocol level, so it will handle third-party IM clients like Trillian or Pidgin. It can't monitor strictly Web-based IM conversations, but it can block access to such sites. If you activate monitoring, it records everything. There's no analysis like Net Nanny's, which can give the kids privacy by default but automatically start recording conversations that turn dangerous.—
Safe Eyes's game control is simple. You can set it to block access to game-related Web sites, and you can set it to block Internet access for popular out-of-browser Web-based games and game systems like Steam, Comrade, and Gamespy Arcade. Both of these are all-or-nothing setting—there's no individual games list or ESRB-based control like Net Nanny's.
Game control is just a different view of the Program Blocking feature, which you can invoke from the product's system tray menu. Blocked programs still run; they just can't connect to the Internet. In any case, game or program blocking isn't effective. Your kids will quickly figure out that all they need do is launch a renamed copy of the blocked program.
Protecting Personal InformationSometimes kids post things on social networking sites that they really shouldn't, like home address or phone number. Like OnlineFamily.Norton, Safe Eyes lets you define any number of too-personal data items for each child, but, where Norton actively blocks sending the defined personal information, Safe Eyes simply logs the transgression. This feature works on sites other than social networking and can also log the use of profanity or sexually suggestive language.
Unfortunately, once you get a notification that your child has posted personal information, the breach has already occurred. All you can do at that point is ask your child to delete the information and be more careful going forward. Safe Eyes really ought to block the breach in the first place.
Net Nanny dredges up tons information about kids' social networking profiles, because it won't let the child log in without installing the Net Nanny application. This app grabs profile details, photos, friend lists, and so on, making them available to the parent. But due to requirements by the sites themselves the data is scrubbed after 24 hours… and the child will have to accept the app again at next login. It's definitely a powerful monitoring tool, but awkward for those monitored. Safe Eyes doesn't record this kind of information; on the plus side it won't frustrate the kids.
Enhanced Time Limits
Like most parental control systems, Safe Eyes lets you define a weekly schedule of Internet time for each child, in half-hour increments. The 6.0 edition adds example schedules—choose an example to fill in the whole grid. I like the idea, but I wish it offered more than two examples.
You can also set a daily limit on Internet access in 15-minute increments, and the time limit carries over across all computers in the household. A kid who uses up a two-hour time limit under Net Nanny can just switch computers for another two hours. One item on the program's system tray menu lets a child check how much time remains; another lets adult grant one-time extensions. Not at home? You can grant that extension remotely.—
Safe Eyes can send instant alerts using any combination of e-mail, phone, or text message if kids attempt too many blocked activities. For each child, you choose one of three sensitivity levels. The alert goes out whenever that child hits the sensitivity threshold and includes information about the trigger action.
OnlineFamily.Norton offers e-mail alerts and also lets you choose which types of events trigger notifications. There's no threshold; notifications go out to all listed e-mail addresses right away.
Net Nanny can't alert you by phone or text, but its alert system is superior in most other ways. You can fine tune exactly what events deserve an alert, specify which e-mail addresses to use with which events, and choose between real-time, hourly, daily and weekly e-mails. That's flexibility!
Reports and Remote Configuration
There's little to say about remote configuration. Safe Eyes's HTML-based user interface looks and acts exactly the same whether you're using the local program on the children's computer or configuring it remotely. The same is decidedly not true of the product's reporting system—local reports and remote reports are completely different.
Reports are stored locally by default, and the local report is well-organized. It defaults to today's activity, but you can choose any date range desired. The main page summarizes Web sites blocked and allowed as well as the top ten searches and sites visited, much the way Spector Pro does. When you drill down for details of blocked or allowed sites Safe Eyes lists the domains involved, with an option to get a list of all URLs within any domain.
Other tabs list all videos blocked or watched, music choices viewed, and IM conversations. Another page lists all games and programs used, along with how many uses and the time of the most recent use. If the child posted any personal information or profanity online, it shows up on the social networking tab. All e-mail correspondence, including attempts by non-approved senders, appears in the report, if you enabled that feature. You can have a non-interactive summary of this report e-mailed on daily or weekly.
Net Nanny lets you view the exact same report locally and online; OnlineFamily.Norton reports are always online. Safe Eyes offers completely different reports for local and online viewing, and that's not good. If you're storing reports locally, Safe Eyes won't let you see them online at all. If you switch to storing reports on the Safe Eyes server you can't see the local reports. And each report only shows the activities that took place while that type of report was selected.
The online report doesn't include any of the innovations found in the local report. It's just a long, expandable list of happenings on a specific day, with no ability to aggregate reporting over a longer time-span. InternetSafety.com needs to make the online report match the local report and display the same information in both.
Safe Eyes 6.0 is a very good parental control system. If you need a product that works on both Macs and PCs, Safe Eyes is your best choice. But for a wholly PC-based household it doesn't quite come up to the capabilities of Editors' Choice Net Nanny 6.5.
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Final Thoughts
Safe Eyes 6.0
Safe Eyes 6.0 focuses more on what the family likes to do online than on how to control what they do, though it retains all its protective features. Its online activity reporting needs work, but it's still the best choice for families using both Macs and PCs.