Symantec, best known for their anti-virus software, has launched a new service today that aims to help parents monitor the way their children use their personal computers. It’s called Norton Family Online (https://onlinefamily.norton.com) and it’s a free, web-based service that combines with special software to keep detailed logs of sites visited, searches made, instant messages traded, and social networks accessed all thanks to reports uploaded to Symantec’s online servers. Parents log into the service to access the information and can even use the remote connection to set and enforce time limits. It’s a clean, simple service to use, but like other monitoring tools, is easily defeated, often confused, and will need parents to invest considerable time to customize and train the tools in order to get true value. In the end you’ll wonder who you’re monitoring more, your children or the monitoring service that’s supposed to be watching them. 

Let’s be clear, your personal information is being shared with Symantec’s online servers through a service that is currently listed as being in “beta”. If you’re not comfortable with that, and it should give you pause, than this is not for you.

Parents begin by registering for a free account and creating profiles for each of their children. This includes their names as well as the year they were born for age limits. Parents can then go into each profile and set limits for any of five activities – web surfing, searching, instant messaging, social networking, and time spent in front of the computer. They can have the service record information shared, block sites and services you dictate, and send alert e-mails when questionable activity is detected.

From there they are asked to install “Norton Safety Minder” software onto each computer in the home, both Macs and PCs. Each computer is then assigned to a monitoring profile and once they all connect online and update, your settings and restrictions are put into place. Computers will begin to block specific websites, keep track of search words entered into Google, flag new user accounts, and log off when set time limits are reached.

When your children power up their computers they will be greeted by a pop-up window warning them that they are now being monitored by their parents. They can use the icon added to their taskbar to access a list of activities their parents have chosen to watch for. According to Symantec, the idea is to stimulate a discussion between parents and children about the process, although it doesn’t lessen the Big Brother aspect in any way. That icon will always be there, in the taskbar, watching you.

Parents can log into the service from any computer connected online and access detailed reports for each profile, divided into each of the five activities and listing which computer they were recorded from. If you don’t have time to keep up with the reports, you can set the service to send you an alert e-mail whenever your child tries to chat with a blocked IM friend, sends personal information, or signs up for a new social networking account.

So far, so great. Easy installation, clean and simple controls and settings, thorough features, and a service filled with good intentions. In practice however, all this wonderful preparation falls apart.

There is a series of children’s books centered around a character named Amelia Bedilia who is easily confused by the ambiguity of the English language, to comic effect. In one instance she is asked to enter a living room and draw the curtains of the main window. She literally pulls out an art pad and a pencil and begins to draw an illustration of the curtains. Monitoring services suffer the same problem, more so because they are computers and as such only know and do what you tell them. Norton Family Online is no different.

Web Logs

In addition to recording every web url your child visits, the logs also pick up the urls of all the ads within the websites too. In my test session the service recorded that the #1 site visited by me through my child account was “googleads.g.doubleclick.net”

Blocking Websites

There are 47 different website categories you can select to have blocked. By default, 22 of these will be selected for you including drugs, alcohol, suicide, lingerie, pornography, computer hacking, and to avoid conversations with strangers, social networking and discussions websites.

In testing I found that it blocked Xbox.com because of its online forums which it considered a place where kids can be approached by strangers, but not the similar forums at PlayStation.com.

For the same reason it blocked Vimeo’s video-sharing network, but not YouTube. It blocked access to Hotmail, but not Gmail. Concerned about lingerie it blocked Victoria’s Secret, but not the Pussycat Dolls’ online lingerie store. At Break.com, which features videos with mature content, it only blocked the videos in the promotional section of the website and not the main section.

These results are incredibly hit-or-miss, even for monitoring software. Parents will have to enter each website individually for blocking in order to compensate.

Getting Permission

When the service blocks a website it displays a feedback page so that your child can send you a message asking you to unblock the effected website. Again, the idea is to stimulate a conversation between parent and child. The funny thing is, when I sent feedback as a child, the parental account didn’t receive it, and then the service unblocked the website immediately on its own.

Kids will also need to call Mom or Dad if they want more time on their computer. Once they click on "extend" they'll need to enter their parents password. 

Keyword Searches

Every time your child types in a word into Google or Wikipedia, it’s recorded and sent to your account for review. Except if your child uses a different search engine. It only monitors the main ones.

Having tracked my searches, the service decides to give higher priority to blogger Robert Scoble and the Pussycat Dolls as questionable content over the Suicide Girls and Victoria's Secret. 

Sharing Personal Information

You can set the service to alert you each time your child types in their personal information (such as their birthday) or registers for a new online account with a web service. I couldn’t make this work at all. I’ve gone over the settings repeatedly, shared personal information and created new accounts, and it missed it each time.

Instant Messaging

You can block this activity completely or have it only detect when new friends are added and keep track of all the messages traded. Again, in my tests the service missed this activity completely. I used Windows Live Messenger and Norton’s service didn’t even know it was running. I couldn’t get it to track it at all.

No IM accounts or friends detected, but they're there.  

I could go on. Clearly Norton’s beta service still has a way to go before its ready for prime time, and its intent on being very thorough in its monitoring may mean it never will be. The more complex the activity, the harder it is to analyze. The company is right to push the idea that the focus has to be on creating a dialogue between children and adults, but it’s hard to do that if you are following their every keystroke. Better to cover the most common concerns well and offer more features for parents and their children to address them together.