Android Nougat Norton Family Unable to Sign in
Our Verdict
If you tin get by with Norton Family's weak app management, the rest of the product is a content-filtering, location-monitoring, child-protecting triumph. Become accept it for a trial run immediately.
For
- Excellent location and geofencing tools
- View YouTube search history, videos watched
- Sensibly chosen default settings
- Windows support
Against
- Can't restrict app use by category, time or schedule
- 'Video monitoring' restricted to YouTube and Hulu viewing in a browser merely
- One or two small interface issues
TechRadar Verdict
If y'all can go by with Norton Family's weak app management, the residuum of the product is a content-filtering, location-monitoring, kid-protecting triumph. Go accept information technology for a trial run immediately.
Pros
- +
Excellent location and geofencing tools
- +
View YouTube search history, videos watched
- +
Sensibly chosen default settings
- +
Windows support
Cons
- -
Tin can't restrict app utilize by category, time or schedule
- -
'Video monitoring' restricted to YouTube and Hulu viewing in a browser only
- -
One or 2 small interface bug
Norton Family unit is a ane-stop parental control product with apps for Android, iOS and Windows.
A wide characteristic set includes back up for limiting screen fourth dimension, blocking inappropriate spider web content, restricting app apply, checking your kid's current device location, and getting alerts when they get in at or go out abode, school, and any other locations which matter in your life.
There'due south real depth to some features. Many parental command apps list the videos your child watches, for case, merely normally you simply become a title. Norton Family displays a thumbnail epitome from the video and the description, a quick and like shooting fish in a barrel mode to run across if information technology'southward an issue.
- Interested in Norton Family? Bank check out the website here
Schoolhouse Time is some other unusual plus, giving you the power to instantly restrict web access to educational sites for anything from 30 minutes to viii hours.
There are significant limits in what Norton Family can practise on each platform. You tin can only block apps on Android, for instance. IOS users tin mostly run whatever they like, although you'll yet get to see what they're doing in Norton'due south alerts and reports. That's not entirely a Norton upshot, though - Apple tree'south security model means iOS doesn't let whatsoever app to have the aforementioned level of system control as Android.
Pricing is reasonable at $l to cover unlimited devices for a year. Bark charges $99 to protect unlimited devices, Qustodio and Net Nanny cover 5 devices for $55, Kidslox asks $55 to cover x. In that location are some cheaper options, though, specially Kaspersky Prophylactic Kids, which you can install on every bit many devices every bit necessary for just $15 a year.
Setup
Sign upward for Norton Family and you're able to immediately create basic profiles for each of your children, with name, an age-related choice of restriction level (<8, 8-11, 12-14, xv-17) and an optional photo. Cull your child'due south device platform (Android, iOS, Windows), opt to send them an email link to download the app, and the starting time step is consummate.
Now all you have to do is install and set the app on each platform. Could take a while if you've a lot of hardware, but there's zippo especially tricky involved.
After installing Norton's app on our test Android device, for instance, we logged in using our parent's account and told Norton this was our kid'southward device. It displayed the child profiles we'd created earlier, and we chose the one who owned this device.
The app then explained it needed several permissions to accept proper command of the device: device admin, app usage, location, brandish over other apps, accessibility and phone. Many parental control apps spring into the setup process without properly explaining what they're doing, so it'due south skilful to see Norton lay everything out on a single page, with a cursory caption of why each permission is necessary.
This helps setup feel more organized, also. The typical Android parental command setup might tell you it needs to set up a location permission, then display the relevant Android setting, so move to Accessibility, so display that setting - you must follow the preset order, and you lot've no idea what'southward coming side by side or how many steps are left. Here, you can see all the required permissions on the same screen, choose them in whatever club you like, and see a reassuring greenish tick side by side to everything you've set correctly - it feels much less intimidating, and nosotros had our device gear up in a couple of minutes.
Screen fourth dimension
Norton Family is best managed from the Family unit Dashboard, a web portal where you lot can customize settings and view reports on everything your kids take done recently.
The interface is straightforward, with activities summarized in six areas - Web, Time, Mobile Apps, Location, Search and Videos - and a Settings icon in each area where you lot can define how it works.
At that place's a not bad plus in a dashboard timeout, where your session automatically closes if you're inactive for too long. Most parental controls apps don't practise this, a potential trouble if you lot get distracted, leave the dashboard open up, and your child passes by and can admission and tweak their ain protection levels.
Norton Family applies sensible default settings depending on your kid's age. Our exam 9-year-old had his device automatically blocked at bedtime, for instance (7pm-6am weekdays, 8pm-6am weekends), with daily device use limited to 2 hours Monday-Friday, 5 hours at the weekend.
If that'southward not right for your family, you can modify the schedule and usage limits as advisable for each day. To encourage a screen-complimentary mealtime, for case, you might opt to disable devices from 5-6pm, but restore than afterward.
There's a small interface hassle in that you must click an icon for a mean solar day of the calendar week to see its current schedule. Many apps display these side by side, making it easier to compare schedules beyond the week. This won't matter much once you're set up, though, and overall, the screen time features piece of work very well.
Content filtering
Norton Family automatically blocks websites past category, based on the level of restriction chosen when creating a child'southward profile.
If that brake doesn't quite piece of work for yous, information technology's possible to change the block/ let setting for each of the 47 categories. These are well chosen, and go well across the usual 'must block' topics (Pornography, Drugs, Weapons) to requite y'all many more fine-tuning opportunities. Yous could block sites in categories similar Discussions and Online Interactions, for instance, forth with Military machine, Plagiarism, Spider web Mail, Web Proxies and more.
'Restricted' and 'Allowed' lists enable defining sites which will always be blocked, or e'er be allowed, whatever their category.
If yous'd prefer a more relaxed arroyo to web filtering, you tin change Norton'southward supervision level from Blocked to Warn (your kid gets a warning, but can so view the site), or fifty-fifty Monitor (no blocks, no warnings, but you can review browsing history later to check what'southward going on.)
Search history and control
Norton Family unit's second layer of web protection enforces Safety Search (or its equivalent) at Google, Bing, YouTube, Yahoo and Ask. That ensures its search engine uses its own filters to restrict inappropriate content, and cuts the hazard that your child volition detect whatever dubious sites in the first place.
This more often than not works very well. Exam the app by entering a few of your favorite swear words at Google, and you'll more often than not run into definitions in online dictionaries and sites similar Wikipedia.
Norton allows parents to browse their child'south internet searches. We wondered if this feature was cleaved at the starting time of the review, as our search terms didn't appear. They popped up around half an hr later, though, and so it but looks like they sometimes need a little time to synchronize.
A Video Monitoring department aims to collect your child'due south video searches, and display information on what they're watching. This is relatively express, as it but works at YouTube and Hulu, and just at the websites, non in the apps.
We found our video watching activities also took a few minutes to achieve the parent's view. When they did, though, we were able to view the title of the video, its URL, a thumbnail and the video description. We'd like to meet this level of support extended to other streaming platforms, simply even as a YouTube/ Hulu characteristic, in that location's real value here.
App management
After its proficient kickoff, Norton Family'south app management tools were a thwarting. You can view installed Android apps, cake any you don't similar, and... No, at that place is no 'and' - that's it.
You can't block apps by category or age, for instance. You can't limit apps by fourth dimension or schedule. You can't allow some apps to run without counting towards usage time. You lot can't block iOS apps at all; most parental controls also struggle with that, but usually you tin can at to the lowest degree block apps in a predefined list.
Your kid can freely install new apps, also, unless you lot block Google Play Shop. Norton Family unit notifies you of new apps, though, so you tin review and selectively block new apps as they appear.
If that's not enough for you, Boomerang allows restricting Android apps past time and schedule, and doesn't permit new apps to exist installed until y'all personally approve them. Google'south free Family Link gives you simple app time limiting and Google Play restrictions for free, and ESET not only restricts app use past fourth dimension, only it also allows your kids request actress minutes from within the app if they demand more.
Location monitoring
Norton's location monitoring is turned off by default, but we enabled it and checked our test device location in a click or 2. The dashboard displayed this accurately, and initially in a Google Map satellite view, although this reverted to a regular map when we zoomed out.
You're able to view a device location history in the same way, and you can even filter the list to see where your kid was in a specific time range on a detail appointment.
Geofencing support enables defining of import locations and getting alerts when your children arrive or leave.
Norton merely creates circular zones, merely information technology scores past allowing them to be repositioned (you can drag a pin if it'south not placed quite correctly), and set to anything from 100 to 3,200 meters across. Small-scale zones are great if you merely want to see when your child is at a family habitation, just huge ones have their own uses. Fix one in your full general neighborhood, for instance, and your child could visit a friend'due south business firm or get to the store without whatsoever problems, simply yous'd all the same get a notification if they go also far.
At that place'southward another plus in the option to raise an alert when your child arrives at a zone, leaves, or both, a level of control yous won't always see elsewhere.
Beware, though, Norton's location tools aren't available in a long list of countries, including much of Europe (the US and United kingdom are covered, only Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands and many others are not.) Bank check the list on the website if that might exist a problem.
Final verdict
Norton Family's feeble 'block or non' app management tools are disappointing, but otherwise it'southward a powerful product with well-designed content filtering and pinnacle-quality location tools, and an 'unlimited device' license ways you can fix the app upward wherever it's needed.
- We've as well featured the all-time parental control software
Source: https://www.techradar.com/reviews/norton-family-parental-control-software