Our favorite parental-control package, Cybersitter 2002, covers sex, drugs, hate, and violence out of the box. Fine-tuning protection in over 30 categories—from cults to hacking—is simple. Specifying blocked or allowed sites is straightforward, and unlisted sites are filtered for content. Unlike its competitors, Cybersitter offers free list updates.

Running as a system tray icon or in stealth mode, Cybersitter blocks sites without fanfare; they simply don't appear. (Programs such as CyberPatrol require a log-on and spawn pop-ups at blocked sites.) The scheduler makes setting daily and weekly time limits easy, but you don't get separate user controls: Protection is either on or off. Parents can keep tabs on kids through daily logs, and parents with fixed IP addresses on their home systems can download a free utility from Solid Oak Software to monitor and configure Cybersitter remotely.

Cybersitter filters POP e-mail and instant messages by blanking out banned words; for Web-based e-mail it blocks entire messages with questionable content. The program can also block file sharing, IM, newsgroups, and FTP access.