For the modern multi-computer household, Symantec’s approach to parental control makes perfect sense. Parents view reports and manage configuration through a Web-based console while a small agent on each computer (PC or Mac) enforces the house rules. With the release of Norton Online Family Premier ($49.99/year, direct) parents can get more information than ever, and the initial promotional price will knock $20 off for the first year.

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Earlier this year, Norton Online Family got a new name (it was OnlineFamily.Norton before) and a minor makeover. The changes were mostly cosmetic; most significant was its expansion to multi-lingual support for 25 different languages. The Premier edition offers all the same features as OnlineFamily.Norton (Free, 4 stars) did, and adds several new ones too.

What’s New in Premier
The basic Norton Online Family service has always been free, and it remains free. Symantec listened to many feature requests and identified several that they thought users would pay for.
Specifications

Many parents wanted to track children’s time on the computer more closely. The free edition lets them see usage over the past week, but they wanted more. The Premier edition retains usage data for 90 days. Thus, parents can view a graph of usage for any week and a monthly calendar that lists hours spent each day.

Many kids spend hours watching online videos. Even with Safe Search forced on, some of the videos they find might not please parents. The Premier edition specifically tracks all videos watched on YouTube, Hulu, or Google Videos. In the activity report parents can click to view a thumbnail, category, and description for each video—they can even click through to view exactly what the child watched.

Norton Online Family can send e-mail alerts to one or more addresses any time a child violates policy, and parents can go online any time to view a summary of the child’s activity or very detailed reports. The Premier edition combines these features by sending out an e-mailed summery of activity at the end of each week and at the end of the month.

Still Full-Featured
The rest of the product’s features are shared with the free edition, and, taken together, they make an impressively full-featured parental control system. One point worth noting is that Symantec emphasizes communication rather than rigid control. Parents can choose to warn a child rather than actively blocking access to inappropriate websites. The system can simply tell the child to log off when the time-limit kicks in rather than forcing the issue. And each child can view a simple, English-language version of the product’s configuration settings expressed as “House Rules.”

Norton can block access to sites matching 47 distinct categories, and it’s not affected by the simple network command that knocks out Bsecure CloudCare 6.0 ($49.95 direct, 3 stars) and some others. It can’t filter secure HTTPS traffic, though, so if a clever teen gains access to a secure anonymizing proxy website all bets are off. Net Nanny 6.5 ($39.99 direct, 4.5 stars), our current Editors’ Choice for parental control, is one of the very few products that can filter HTTPS traffic. Net Nanny can also analyze the content of individual pages without necessarily blocking a whole site, something few others manage.

Norton’s weekly time scheduler controls when computer use is allowed, where Net Nanny, CyberPatrol Parental Controls 7.7 ($39.95 direct, 4 stars), Safe Eyes 6.0 ($49.95 direct, 4 stars), and most others control when Internet access is allowed. Parents can also set a daily maximum computer usage for weekdays and weekends, with an option to only count the time the child spends actively using the computer.

Instant messaging chat control in Norton is comprehensive and well thought-out. Worried parents can choose to block all new contacts until after they’ve approved each new friend. Those feeling a bit more relaxed can allow contact by new friends but monitor their conversations. The management console lists all IM friends and lets a parent set each to be blocked, monitored, or neither. Net Nanny and Safe Eyes can monitor conversations but don’t include the ability to block specific friends. The unusually effective parental control component in Kaspersky Internet Security 2011 ($79.95 direct for three licenses, 4.0 stars) does both.

Norton Online Family Premier product will track logins to Facebook, MySpace and other popular social networking sites, and it can alert parents if the child enters a spurious age. It can also alert if the child posts parent-specified personal information, but that’s about all. If your main concern is how your child behaves on social networking sites SafetyWeb ($100 direct, 4 stars) offers full tracking of publicly available information kids have posted.

Norton offers an aggregated list of all sites visited, omitting URLs that simply point to ads or third-party content. Parents can click to get details about a given site, including a thumbnail. Another page lists recent search terms; note that for Google, Bing, and several other popular sites Norton forces the Safe Search option.

As noted earlier, parents can get e-mail notification on various violations including visiting a blocked site, disabling Safety Minder, and entering a false age on a social network site. On receiving an alert the parent can log in and get details or take action. For example, if the child requested access to a normally banned site the parent can grant that access. I do wish the notification e-mail included a link to a specific event in the online activity report.

This all adds up to a product that’s nearly as powerful as Net Nanny, even considering only the free edition’s features.

Norton Online Family in Action
Setting up an account online is simple, and installing the tiny Safety Minder on the test computer went quickly. As noted, you can install Safety Minder on as many computers as you want—you could even install it on Grandma’s computer if the kids spend time with her. All you need to do is match each parental control account with the Windows account used by that child.

I couldn’t actually experience the full effect of some Premier features. Having 90 days of history rather than seven doesn’t make a visible difference when in reality my “kids” have only been active for three days. And I haven’t yet received an end-of-week report in e-mail.

On the other hand, video tracking is very effective and very clear. The list shows just what they watched, and when, with a handy option to go watch it yourself. And the basic features, those also available in the free edition, are well thought out and easy to use.

The activity summary page is especially helpful to get a handle on the child’s activities. It lists the most-visited web sites and most-contacted IM friends, along with a graph of the web site categories most often viewed. A “word cloud” panel offers an overview of recent searches, and the summary now includes a summary of the past week’s time spent on the computer.

Free or Premier?
Norton Online Family is definitely a good choice for parental control, especially for those who want to keep open a conversation about online safety with their kids. The Premier edition’s full non-promotional price costs $10 more than the Editors’ Choice Net Nanny, but you pay extra to install Net Nanny on multiple computers. There’s no bad choice here, so pick the option that best fits your family’s needs and lifestyle.

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