Flexible Links
My Blogging Inspiration
Campaign for Unshaved
Snatch (CUSS) & Other Rants
Flexible Affiliations
|
| Friday, August 14, 2009 |
McAfee Family Protection Blog Tour |
My husband is an IT guy, but not a techie. He has years of experience managing IT operations, and he currently manages project managers and systems analysts. He thus has a really good handle on what needs to be done to keep the computers in our house secure, but, as he will be the first person to admit, he doesn't always have the technical skill to do what needs to be done. He often quotes one of his Carnegie Mellon professors who said, "My fourteen year-old daughter believes I keep track of everything she does on the computer. She believes this with good reason, because I can...and I do." Unfortunately, neither of our boys have as good a reason to believe the same thing about us. We haven't worried too much about it yet, as our older son hasn't turned six yet, and we have yet to allow them any unsupervised time on a real computer. However, we have begun talking about how to protect them as they get older. I was pretty excited to participate when www.mcafee.com/familyprotection McAfee Family Protection launched a blog tour with Mom Central.
I am very impressed by the functionality and ease of configuration of McAfee Family Protection. The installation process required only a few clicks, and no difficult decisions. I strongly recommend that anyone who buys the tool immediately review all of the defaults. I had assumed that the software would start unconfigured and require me to set everything up, but that was not the case at all. The moment the software came on, it had already established several settings. This does make sense, since anyone who wants the status quo is probably not installing this software, but if you don't know it is coming, it can be a surprise.
I initially experimented with the web blocking functionality. I thus attempted my inaugural visit to the website of a well known pornographic magazine. No luck, or perhaps I should say good luck. The software blocked me. I also appreciated the flexibility of the categories. With a couple of mouse clicks, I could change what types of websites were banned, for example preventing and then allowing eBay by blocking and then permitting access to auction sites. It was also interesting to read the way McAfee described each category, because it alerted me to the possibility of certain types of sites that I might not have otherwise considered. The software also allows you to block individual websites. I went to my husband's college website, then blocked it, and McAfee kept me away until I reauthorized it.
I did find two challenges with web blocking. The first was that I sometimes found that I had not saved changes to the configuration, even though I thought I had. I imagine this would get better as I got more used to the product. The second was that some of the categories included sites that I did not expect to be blocked. For example, I was unable to experiment with the way McAfee tracks Facebook behavior until I enabled access to Facebook.com. The good news is that McAfee was more thorough than my own judgment, but implementing it has unexpected side effects.
McAfee has two ways of limiting the amount of time that children spend on-line. You can either limit the total amount of time or ban specific amounts of time, for example the middle of the night. McAfee gave me ample warning that I was approaching a time without internet access, but when I hit the specified time, it shut me down.
Email blocking was equally effective. It not only required me to specify what email accounts I would allow but I then needed to specify from which email addresses I could receive email. This does provide extra security. It also means an awful lot of data entry to add the email address of every friend of one of your kids. On the other hand, I can't think of a reason why I would want to limit one of my children to a particular email address and yet not want to control their contacts.
One of my husband's biggest nightmare scenarios is the way children can give out dozens of individual pieces of information that a predator can put together to build a complete picture. I was thus pleased with the Social Networking features that report if any of a number of designated pieces of personal information are posted to Facebook or another social networking site. It doesn't actually block the posting, but if you configure the software to keep a record, you will have no trouble finding out what happened and tracking it down quickly.
While I was impressed by the thoroughness of the Usage Reporting, it does require you to check on the computer to see what your little one did...or tried to do on-line. There is an Instant Alerts capability that sets McAfee to email or text you or anyone else you designate when a child tries to perform a prohibited act. Although it seemed easy to configure, I did not successfully get this to work. When my kids are older, I will need some product support to keep me informed of bad events in real time.
As a final note, I was impressed by the security model. I expected a user account on McAfee to align with a user account on the computer, but in fact the McAfee user accounts are setup so that multiple people can share the same computer account, and each can have a different level of access based on how he or she is configured. While my husband may snicker that sharing the same computer account isn't good practice, it makes me more comfortable to know that McAfee will indulge any laziness on my part. This product impressed me a great deal in a short period of time. I expect to spend a lot of time with it when my kids are older
I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central on behalf of McAfee and received a sample to facilitate my candid review. In addition, McAfee sent me a blanket and care package to thank me for taking the time to participate. |
posted by Alex Elliot @ 9:35 PM
 |
|
|
|
|
My Profile
| Name: | Alex Elliot |
| Home: | MA, United States |
| About Me: | Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 5 year old and a 3 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe. |
| See my complete profile |
Flexible Media Appearances
The Morning Show with
Mike and Juliet, Fox TV, August 3, 2007
Flexible Feeds
More Flexible Parenting
Previous Posts
Archives
|
