WebRoot Childsafe
WebRoot Childsafe's offering concentrates primarily on logging user activity, relying on the end user to set up a blacklist of sites. It offers no keyword filtering and little in the way of additional functionality. Given its US$29.95 asking price, it's only an acceptable choice if you've got plenty of time on your hands, and if the popup policy of the free version of We-Blocker truly annoys you.
WebRoot hides itself quite well; unlike most of the other filtering packages we've looked at, it offers no system tray icon, instead relying on a keyboard combination to bring up its control panel. This is protected by a master password, but there's no facility for a reminder question, so remembering the password is quite important. It also took us some time to realise that logging/filtering has to be enabled from within the program before it will do anything at all.
Childsafe's theory on filtering seems to be that users who know they're being watched will behave themselves, and as such, it concentrates more on logging user activity than on strict filtering parameters. While it does allow users to set up blacklists, when first installed it knows nothing. This placed it firmly outside the scope of our testing; without loading in the URLs of all of our test sites, we'd never be able to block anything.
Childsafe does offer some options we'd love to see in other filtering programs, most notably the ability to force users to click-agree to an acceptable usage policy, as well as some very strict logging that captures pretty much every aspect of a user's activity. Activity logs can be periodically emailed out behind the scenes, making it nigh-on impossible for users to delete or modify logs.
Ultimately, however, Childsafe does come up short on filtering options; the ability to set user blacklists is present in every other package we've tested, and while its logging facility is quite advanced, it doesn't offer any analysis of user pages, so you'd need to follow a user's surfing path closely in order to build up your blacklist.
WebRoot Childsafe
Company: WebRoot
Price: US$29.95 via download
| Introduction | Editor's Choice | How we tested | |
| AllegroSurf | ChildSafe | ChildWebGuardian | ControlKids |
| CyberPatrol | Cybersitter | Net Nanny | WeBlocker |
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