I love technology. My husband loves technology. Most of my children love technology. I don’t even want to admit how many computers we own. I love the quick access to information. I love the ability to communicate with people on-line. But I recognize that the internet is a dangerous place. It requires much wisdom and discernment. I cannot allow my children to be on-line unmonitored.
There are different methods of monitoring including putting the computer in a public place, sitting with a child while they are on-line, and various internet protection products. I recently had the opportunity to try Action Alert.
Action Alert has FREE Parental Control Software that includes the following features:
I am impressed by all the Action Alert has to offer for free! They also offer their Maximum Protection Plan for $29.99. That plan includes all of the above features plus allows for multiple user protection, is fully customizable, and includes social network monitoring.
I installed Action Alert on my “old” laptop. (It’s amazing how quickly computers are “old”! I’m calling it old in this case because I have a new one, and that laptop is now used mainly for the children.) Microsoft Vista 64-bit is its operating system. Its default web browser is Google Chrome. Action Alert was simple to install. I received notifications from Action Alert via e-mail as was expected.
However, Action Alert really didn’t work well on that computer. First, I should mention that this computer wasn’t running particularly well to start with. And Vista is an almost universally despised operating system. Maybe the problem was with the combination of Google Chrome and Action Alert. But running Action Alert seemed to cause frequent shutdowns of Google Chrome. Since it was the kids’ computer, it wasn’t a huge problem. It would have been unacceptable on my own computer, however.
I wish it had worked better for me, but I still think it’s a good option for anyone looking for parental control software. Since the basic program is free, there’s no risk in trying it out and seeing how it works.
Disclosure: I received a free trial of Action Alert Maximum Protection in order to write this review. I was not compensated for this review. All opinions expressed are my own.