CyberPatrol Review and Free Trial Download – The Parental Control Software to Block Internet Websites and Protect Children

by Parinda Researc... | Sat, 18/04/2009 - 15:53 | in

Internet Filtering and Parental Control

Children today are exposed to a lot of influences and have access to a lot of information on the Internet. At their impressionable age, it becomes important to protect them from undesirable influences online. The anonymity that the Internet provides leaves children vulnerable to predators and pedophiles online, looking for their victims. There are many disturbing aspects including porn or aggressive and violent content that children need to be shielded from, when they access the Internet. It is not always possible for parents to be looking over the shoulder of their children. Nor is this a particularly smart strategy as it would annoy the kids and alienate them. It could make them feel that you are intruding into their space and not giving them enough privacy. There are ways around this. One of the most effective ways is to use Internet filtering software. This is also known as parental control software because it is most commonly used by parents to regulate the Internet access of their children.

Click here to download the free trial of CyberPatrol from their official website

How CyberPatrol protects children

CyberPatrol is one such parental control software that will help you regulate and control the Internet access of your children. You can monitor the Internet surfing patterns of you kids adventure that they're not visiting websites that can be a bad influence on them. You can also ensure that they are not providing personal information about themselves or about your family to strangers. Since ages, parents have been asking their kids not to talk to strangers. In the digital age this takes on a whole new meaning because the Internet and chat rooms on it in particular are full of strangers making conversation with each other.

Easy to install this software

As an Internet filtering program CyberPatrol is very user-friendly and you'll be able to install it, configure it and use all its features irrespective of how experienced you are or aren't with using such software.

How CyberPatrol blocks unsuitable websites

CyberPatrol can be configured to block all websites that are unsafe. For this the software depends on a very large list of websites considered unsafe by it. If any website is listed in this huge database, access to it is blocked by CyberPatrol. Websites are categorized depending on their subject and categorization takes into account several factors including whether or not nudity exists on the site, whether the site has gambling or drugs related content. There are 14 categories in which websites are categorized. It considers whether a site has content related to intolerance, violence, gambling, drugs and other such subjects that kids should be protected from. You can also add specific websites that are not in the list of CyberPatrol and that you want to deny access to when your children access the Internet. The database of CyberPatrol that lists sites not meant for children is very huge and is updated very frequently.

CyberPatrol integration with Windows XP and Windows Vista

You can integrate the accounts you set up on CyberPatrol with existing accounts that you have on Windows XP or Windows Vista. You can also use it with Windows 2000.

Apart from blocking websites you can also prevent your children from chatting online. CyberPatrol can block access to all chat applications and other programs that ask for personal information.

Regulate the total number of hours and the time of internet access

You can determine the hours of the day when your children are allowed to access the Internet. You can also determine the total number of hours every day that your kids can access the Internet.

Stop risky activity on the internet by your children

You can prevent your kids from downloading anything from the Internet. You can also stop them from accessing peer-to-peer file sharing networks and using instant messaging software such as Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger.

You decide the level of access – for kids of different ages

CyberPatrol lets you decide how conservative or how liberal you want to be when it comes to letting your kids access the Internet. For instance if you want to let them chat using instant messengers, you can configure it so. You can configure different levels of access for younger kids and older kids, providing more liberal access to your older children.

A lot of customization is possible and you can access the internet unrestricted, yourself

When you set up the software on your computer, you'll be able to choose which topics you want to block to protect your children. There is a large amount of customization that is possible with CyberPatrol. This doesn't have to and won't come in the way of your own Internet surfing. You can have access to all the websites that have been blocked by
CyberPatrol for your children.

Help and support is available

If you need any help with installing the software, configuring it or troubleshooting you can get online support on the official website of CyberPatrol.

CyberPatrol License for 3 PCs

A single license of CyberPatrol works on up to three PCs and comes with a 1-year subscription. Updates are automatic. You can alternatively set updates the manual or let the program update itself once a day.

CyberPatrol for Microsoft Windows

CyberPatrol works only on PCs running Microsoft Windows. You will not be able to use on Apple Mac. If you’re looking for parental control software that is compatible with Apple Mac, there may be other solutions available.

Our conclusion

We found that when filtering websites there were virtually no false positives. This means that CyberPatrol only blocked unsuitable websites and didn't come in the way of accessing websites safe for visiting my kids. Occasionally it did slip up and let a website or two through that should've been blocked by this was where. Besides if you notice this you can always add that particular website to the list and ensure that it is blocked in future. On the other hand if a website is blocked without reason you can choose to white list it and it will never be blocked again. Some other software such as antivirus solutions and security suites also have parental control features but we find that CyberPatrol, a software dedicated to parental control and Internet filtering does a much better job of regulating Internet access. You can use the software to moderate the Internet access of your kids and have better peace of mind.