NetNanny - Just Say No!

If you, like me, have a child in your household that lives on her computer, this article is of great relevance to you.

My daughter is 9 years old (going on 30), and is not afraid of the internet. During her browsing of the internet, we discovered that from time to time she was being exposed to unsuitable content and at times abusing her computer time privileges (staying up until the wee hours of the morning playing online games).

To try and implement some control over what she can and can't do on the internet (and when) I went on a research expedition to try and find a software solution. I googled and googled, finding all kinds of products, but most where listed on questionable sites or did not meet my requirements. Then I remembered that several years ago there was a lot of media coverage about a product called NetNanny (or NetGranny as my daughter calls it - which turns out to be an appropriate name). Reviewing the fairly thin in content website, I concluded that this was exactly what I was looking for, I downloaded the product and started the 14 day trial - we happened to go away on holiday the very next day - and only got back with a day to go on the trial.

My initial thoughts were that the user interface seemed primitive for a product that has been around for years, but on the surface the product looked to address my requirements, so I signed up for a year subscription.

All I can say is that I really regret this, and cleverly, the company have in their terms and conditions, a clause that does not allow you to cancel this subscription... so I'm stuck with this product for the next 10 months or so.

Please do not make the same mistake. This product is atrocious, and just doesn't work as advertised. I've spent countless hours trying to fix or find workarounds to some really strange behaviours, from it blocking websites that are specifically designed for children, to the product outright ignoring web exceptions that I create.

I suspect that when ContentWatch acquired NetNanny in the late 90's, they fired all but one person to do maintenance on the product, and the product hasn't evolved beyond where it was back then. This is even more apparent since my several attempts at contacting their support resulted in no response... so I'm guessing that one person still working on this is on holiday, or just not bothered.

Everyday I have issues with the product, with my daughter not being able to access something, and with there being almost no way of tracing where the problem is. Most of the time, NetNanny doesn't even tell you it's blocking something... regardless of the settings you configure. Every single day, I eventually have to resort to disabling NetNanny for a period of time so my child can access some content, or at the very least log into her games - this completely defeats the purpose of the product for me.

Just simple things that should have been resolved 15 years ago are still an issue. For example, if you want to log onto the web interface (which is ancient to say the least), you need to log on twice. Once on ContentWatch's website, and then once into the NetNanny administration interface... why?

To illustrate, this is a landing page once you log onto the remote administration site:

Very basic, and it wouldn't be so bad if it all just worked. There is absolutely no intelligence in this product, from the administration side, right down to how the client works (the agent installed on your childs PC, or the family PC). The reports are meaningless, there is no analysis being done on the data at all:

And those features I thought were great, turned out to not work well at all. Setting up web settings (content that is blocked or allowed) is done by categories:

But again, these just don't work properly. It looks great, but then some services, like Amazon's WS service are outright blocked because a customer somewhere is using this service on a weapons related website... but they don't block just that link... they block the whole thing. Many child friendly games use this service for generic user authentication or various other bits and pieces... and that's where the headache begins. Block that content category, and my child suddenly can't logon to her game. And the best part is that NetNanny doesn't tell you about it. The game just hangs when it's loading... I spent two days figuring out I had to add allow additional content so that it would work - again, defeating the purpose.

Then last night, we implemented a limited amount of time per day on the internet using the following:

This doesn't work, and turns out to be totally impractical. The time during which she is potentially allowed to access the internet does work, but limiting her to 1 hour per day usage is a nightmare. We've implemented a chore system at home when my daughter can earn additional privileges, for example, she can cash in earned points for an additional hour of internet/gaming (we use You Rule on the iPhone - it's great!). This isn't possible. I also can't setup an exception day, for example the weekends. Now, after 1 hour, it's game over. The only way to work around this is to again, disable NetNanny for a period of time (you can choose to auto-enable after a period of time : 10 minutes - 60 minutes) - just another indication that this is a poorly developed and implemented product.

I could go on for hours describing how terrible this program is, but I leave you with this piece of advice. Just say no to NetNanny! I still haven't found a good alternative, if someone out there has one, please do share - but don't waste your money on NetNanny!