Customer Reviews

Sentry Parental Controls (PC)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I have recently bought my Children a new computer and wanted to get the best, most up-to-date child protection software available. This software is fantastic. It was really easy to install and simple to use. You could say its fool proof.

I was impressed with all the features and application this software offers. You can monitor and filter websites, instant messages and browsing. Also you can block unsuitable websites and instant message activities. You can get mobile and email alerts if your child comes across anything inappropriate whilst online. To be honest this software covers everything and more.

Since this software was installed I have already discovered things about my children.

To safeguard your family I highly recommend this product it! Buy it!

this review is for sentry parental controls 2008 (v10.0).
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Summary: I can see a lot of parents being very happy with this software (as long as you don't get any problems with it). If you are only monitoring one pc buy a single license version from their website - works out cheaper. It may also be worth looking at the alternative products such as built in free Content Advisor in Internet Explorer, or the built in free Parenting controls in Windows Vista. The free software is no where near as comprehensive as the priced products. There are other parenting sofware packages you may want to compare such as webwatcher, and Specter Pro etc. Sentry parent Controls won the iParenting Media awards in 2006 and an honourary awards in 2007, but Specter Pro won this award this year.

Just be sure that you read the EULA (license agreement carefully) - unfortunately this is only available when you install the products, so try a trial version first. Also be aware some of these parenting type products are notorious for being hard to uninstall properly. Most of the application have a free trial you download from their website (including Sentry Parental Controls).
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As an senior IT technician I was very interested in how good these programs actually are, and lucky enough to receive this copy for testing and review.

Installation 4/5 stars
pro - easy to install
cons - need to download the program from their website, no printed or electronic manual, need internet access to view the application.

The software comes with a license for up to 3 pcs, the box includes a dvd case with an enclosed CD and a slip of paper - no printed manual or electronic manual on the cd (...?) - even more disconcerting the cd doesnt even have the install files for the program - the program on the cd simply opens a browser and you download and install the program yourself direct from their website! - the only saving grace is its cheaper purchasing this through amazon than direct from the site! (for this 3 license version)

The program doesnt actually take that long to install and simple case of following the prompts. The slip of paper in the case also has basic instructions with 3 license numbers which you have to enter one during the install.

If you are only installing this on one pc it would actually be cheaper to buy the single license version of this software direct from their website for £20 at the time of writing.

Once the program has installed it goes through the *local* windows accounts so you can enter the age/sex/monitor values for each user. For the majority of parents this will be ok - but for a very few that run domains at home, it will not pick up or let you add domain accounts. So for the review I used the local accounts, warning - modify these values carefully - I couldnt find where to modify the ages afterwards, or if you need to add a new windows account after the program is set up.

The main conern for me is the EULA (license agreement) which you have to agree to when installing the program - its so long, inside a small text box, most people will miss this, but it might be worth taking the time to read it - the bottom line: you allow them to record any information from your monitored pcs, allow them to collect all information about you and your children, allow them to use your information to tailor marketing ads or for stats for external clients,allow them to audit your pc, although they claim not to sell this information they do state by accepting the Eula you agree to them providing this information to their trusted partners . . .Also any information they keep, including ones that you may delete via the control panel and they cannot guarantee this information will be deleted off their systems! This Eula makes me squirm inside a little - although the company makes a lot of money, they are a relatively small company with only a handful of employees,its really up to you if you are comfortable with this - all information is held on their servers, and effectively they can collect all your internet and application browsing habits for all users on the monitored pcs - all with your permission.

usage 4/5 stars
pro - web based. Browser, Computer, Instant Messaging and Application Logs. View logs by date, take snaphots of monitored desktop by schedule or on demand. Block Internet access or Applications you dont want your users to run!
cons - not secure! Emails - times reported on emails are American (e.g. emails reporting when users have logged on.)

The program runs silently, and optionally in stealth mode on the monitored pc. It collects information and sends this all back to the company, albeit unsecurely. To access this information you log onto their website (again unsecurely - if your children are extremely IT savy, and you access their website from home, it is possible to sniff your username and password off the network - rest assured they to be *very* competent to do this, but it is possible.

The website application itself isn't too bad to navigate, although you may need Firefox to access your account - on two separate pcs I could not log in via internet explorer, but got a message saying if errors occurred to use Firefox. Ironically I use Firefox by default, but for many parents I don't see them using Firefox by default!

Once logged in the options are fairly intuitive, although it may take a while to work out and remember where all the options are, although I couldn't find where to edit the age and sex of the pc windows user accounts either on the monitored pc or the application (it looks like its a one shot when you install the program). One thing to note, your details may take some minutes to get to their systems - after setting up the monitored pc I had to wait at least five minutes before all the accounts showed up on their web site. Also it doesn't monitor all internet browsers - only Internet Explorer, AOL, Firefox and Netscape. (Not opera/chrome/chromium etc) - for most parents tho this should be enough, Again I think its only IT savy children that will twig. However the program does also monitor Application usage so this gets around this problem - you can also block these programs from the logs.

Same with the messenger clients - there are loads of different clients a child can use for msn etc (not just msn messenger) but I guess the majority of kids will use the main messenger clients which are accommodated by this application, again all the other clients would be caught in the Application logs and blocked if necessary.

There are some advanced functions such as 'Live Action' which lets you control or record the monitored pc remotely, but i keep getting the pc is not online - even when I log on to their web application from the monitored pc! This may need tweaking on the firewall/router side of things, but they need to specify a list of ports that you need to open for their application to work.

The web application does have some minor problems though - one one monitored pc, I can access the logs and monitors, but not the settings for the users - the browser goes to an asp error page reporting a problem on the server occurred - this happened on four different pcs I used to access the web application. I emailed them the error, but I guess they don't work weekends . . . as all the data is stored at their end, so I'm sure its something they should be able to sort out. Having tried to pursue this during the week I got a disappointing response claiming their server was temporarily down for maintenance - this isn't the case as the rest of the site was working , I also got the same error accessing this web site from work! Most likely this is just a corrupted record in their database, these things do happen, but poor customer service does not bode well.

Other than the one problem with settings, the application does record quite a number of things, from application logs (all the programs the monitored users open - this can tell you if they are trying to use a program to get around your restrictions - you even get the option to block or delete the application. Other logs include Computer, Browser and Instant Messenger Logs. The application also records this by date so you can use a calendar to go straight to specific dates. Their is quite a lot of information that is recorded by the pc and held remotely on their servers. This could be viewed as a con or a pro depending on which way you look at this! Using this you can block inappropriate software or restrict internet access.

Sentry Parental Controls has an impressive list of feature and when I installed the Demo from their web site appears to work well. Now having purchased the product and used it in anger, I have found it limited and unusable.

The filtering is only keyword filtering so does not include any image analysis, or preconfigured black and white lists base on content types selected. This means a large number of sites with inappropriate content don't get detected or filtered out. What makes things even worse is that the keyword searching is not very intelligent and block site which include simple terms like (phone), it has even been blocking the MSN home page. A simple browsing session of less than 10 minutes, generates over 30 alter notifications, several of which are duplicates where multiple phases got detected.

I have only installed the product on 2 systems and it is no longer monitoring one of them correctly even though it is installed and claims to be working. I have contacted support about this and they failed to get back to me after several weeks.

So poor support, over aggressive and inaccurate filters make this product unusable add to this the fact it only works on some systems I am in the process of removing it and finding something that works for me this product has been a waste of money.

To be fair I have read many reviews claiming this is a great product. It may be for some people but it is just no good for what I want, which is a reliable web filter, timely notification which does not flood my email with 100s of messages. If all you want to do is passively monitor Internet usage with no notifications then this may be a good product but for anything else I would avoid this and look elsewhere.

I have been using this Sentry Parental Controls (SPC) product for 1 year. The licence has just expired and so I'm looking to see if I renew the licence or move onto something else.

I concur with others, that installation was very easy, though not problem free. Configuration was much more tricky. Maybe it's the difference between British and USA cultures but I found my kids were visiting websites that I thought were acceptable. In that respect SPC is good, in that it probably plays safe. Unfortunately I found the process of making website available for use by my kids hard work and time consuming. Eventually I worked it out but the website controls were confusing and not always intuitive. The problems I had were that MSFT Internet Explorer stopped working. The support desk advised me to install Firefox and that did work, but it's not really a fix, more of a work around.

My big big big concern with this product is PRIVACY. Everything on the computer is being sent back to the company that owns SPC. It concerns me that one other reviewer has said that this information is not encrypted so potentially everything that is happening on this computer is now open to big wide world.

I discovered one night that our router was permanently busy despite no one being on any of the home computers. I traced the problem to the computer running SPC, but intially thought that the problem was due to some rogue virus/process. I used the firewall to block the process that was doing the sending. That's when I discovered that SPC was the rogue process because several of its features stopped working, and the CPU went to 100% as SPC went into permanent hyperdrive trying to contact the company.

I generally like the product but I dislike the fact that I'm losing my PRIVACY, in potentially very bad ways. I've already told my wife that she must not do any shopping on the computer that has SPC installed.

My other problem concerns licence renewal process. They seem to want me to sign up to a monthly renewal process but do not show any mechanism for stopping the payments. I feel like I'm being tied into a long term commitment. Perhaps I'm an old fuddy duddy but I would prefer to have a simple 1 year licence renewal process.

Sentry Parental Controls itself is a small download that installs on the PC you wish to monitor, but this is only one part of the program and not in itself especially innovative. What is more impressive about Sentry Parental Controls is the web site account, for which you must pay a yearly subscription fee.

As such, configuration of the client program on the PC is very straightforward, offering only a few default options. From the remote-accessing PC, you select the PC and user that you wish to monitor within the application and, if necessary, make further changes to various settings. These settings are comprehensive but reflect those of a number of similar programs. Thus you can restrict access to different types of site, determine whether certain words are blocked, prevent applications from loading, and set the times which a child is allowed to surf the web. Once saved, these settings are downloaded to the client PC and implemented more or less immediately.

There are also plenty of log options to view activity on the PC, but where Sentry Parental Controls really stands out is in terms of its live monitoring options. These can be as simple as emails or texts sent when a violation takes place or simply when a user logs on. It is also possible to get screenshots that will then be sent or stored for a later date. Finally, the Live Action window allows you to check in real time what applications are open on a PC, send messages to the user at the other end to shut down the client computer, or to simply record activity.

Sentry Parental Controls is in a class of its own and probably represents a level of overkill for most parents, but if you want the most comprehensive protection software, this must be it. The only thing against it is the price, regardless of whether you opt for the yearly subscription via download, or the boxed version with licenses for three PCs here from Amazon.

installed this on my 9 year old's pc and it's excellent - trouble free install and works as advertised.

Great to be able to see what he's doing (in truth he's doing next to nothing interesting) and the additional control over the pc makes for easier shut downs when bed time approaches.

The pc is running vista home premium - no performance hit (but it has a quad core cpu so I wouldn't expect any issues)

This software just sits on your pc quietly and stealthly monitors user activity. There's not even an icon on the taskbar to be seen when in stealth mode. It can be set to monitor and report via email, or it can take action and block contents. So that side of things works as advertised.

The issue I have with it is one of privacy, not your kids' privacy, but the privacy of all the users of the pc that has the software installed. The software works by connecting and reporting everything it finds to a central server somewhere on the internet. You actually configure it via a website and not on the computer itself. So everything everyone does on the pc is monitored, and it's not clear how much private information is collected and sent to the server as there is no way of finding out.

You can switch off monitoring for specific users, but I am still not sure if that just switches off the reporting or whether it really does stop usage data being sent to the server.

If your kids have their own computer rather than sharing one with an adult, then this software works great and you only need to physically touch their pc to install it at the beginning, all future re-configuration is via a website.

If you share a pc with your kids, like my wife does, be aware that potentially all your activities can be recorded and no one knows what they might do with their findings. In theory, I'm not saying they will, but in theory, they could monitor your surfing habits and sell that to mailing lists.

Finally, my last issue is that the software is only valid for 1 year, so you will have to pay for a new subscription every 12 months if you want to continue with the protection.

I am not hugely computer literate so this product has been a god send as it means i know my kids are safe even though i am not particularly good with the internet myself.

Sentry Parental Controls (PC)

Sentry Parental Controls is absolutely fantastic. I have tried other protection software before and I haven't found anything that even competes with the level of protection that Sentry provides.

I have two children between 12 and 15 and they are always on the internet and it has really given me peace of mind to know that they are protected online and would recommend Sentry to any parent - it can be tailored to your exact needs offering low or extremely high levels of blocking, filtering and real time monitoring.

i got this freee from Amazon vine and wondered how good it would be at protecting my 9 year old from the perils of the web. Well it's been fantastic. Any website he goes on that has anything that could be deemed inappropriate is blocked AND i get an email telling me what the site was. On checking, these have always been innocent sites that happened to have a word on there that was inappropriate.

I also recieve an email when my son logs onto the computer so i can kep track of that (but not unfortunatley when he logs OFF)

all in all this is first rate and i now don't have to stand behind my son while he's on the web to make sure he's safe.