Parental Control & Monitoring

Bottom Line: PC Pandora 7.0 monitors tons of specific actions on your child's computer, including keystroke logging and periodic screenshots and webcam shots. It's changed very little since the last version, though, and the remote configuration and log viewing option remains unduly expensive.

Bottom Line: Spector Pro monitors just about every event on a PC. To make sure nothing is missed, it captures keystrokes and snaps screenshots. However, it doesn't visibly do anything previous editions didn't, and glitches forced me to suspend testing several times.

Bottom Line: McAfee Family Protection 2.0 can protect your kids on up to three computers. Configuration is all Web-based, so settings affect all computers. It's a good choice for parental control and monitoring.

Bottom Line: The unusual real-time categorization used by this free parental control lets it block any page that contains inappropriate content. It has some weak spots, and I'd like to see more detail in its reports, but it has potential.

Bottom Line: With uKnowKids you can track your child's social networking activity in one convenient Web portal. It tracks email, texts, and calls on smartphones, too. Real-time alerts notify you of risky behavior. The product exhibited some minor bugs in testing, but overall it's impressive.

Bottom Line: SocialShield tracks all of a child's activity on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Google+, and FormSpring, warning parents when it detects bullying, suspicious friends, or other problems. If parents can't end a cyberbullying problem, the company promises to help. This is one impressive monitoring tool.

Bottom Line: With ZillaMail you can give even the youngest kids access to email and instant messaging, secure in the knowledge that they can't communicate with anybody you haven't approved. Parents can view all messages and chat sessions. Kids can personalize the site and play a handful of games when not checking email.

Bottom Line: Product not yet reviewed by PCMag Editors.

Bottom Line: Product not yet reviewed by PCMag Editors.

Bottom Line: Product not yet reviewed by PCMag Editors.