Parental Control - Better Options

It would be really helpful if when a page is blocked on my kid's webpage, it would tell him or me why the page is being blocked. A window saying "this is blocked" is not really helpful. I would like for my child to see why it is being blocked (******, shopping, games, etc.) so that they know why I am blocking it. It is also useful if he goes to a website that might otherwise be safe, but maybe has a place to buy things, so it is blocked due to shopping... Then, I can know whether I can unblock it safely.

One of the main reasons this is so frustrating brings me to the other idea... It is really annoying to find blocked sites if you don't see them immediately. There really needs to be a way to sort, filter, search, etc. for blocked sites. If I want to see a list of all the blocked sites, I should be able to click the column header and see them.. or show ONLY blocked sites, or ONLY blocked sites that contain social networking blocks, etc... Some sites are labeled strangely, so this would go a long way for helping parents help their kids online.

Another thing is that why is google hangouts not being captured on the IM section? Neither the desktop app, nor the phone app captures these IMs. It would be nice if there was a way for these programs to be captured.

Same goes for Images on MMS messages. I see the texts, but the images just show up as a blank or "." on the message.

This parental control suite was touted as being a way to monitor and protect children online, but half of the features don't work, and many of them are really difficult to use. I am an IT professional, and if I have a hard time using these features, "regular" parents will have a very hard time, and wind up just not using the software, or just looking elsewhere.

Thanks

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Comments

nuclearxp

Agreed on all accounts. I am also an IT PRO and find the implementation incomplete. The web site also seems to be very obscure in specifics as to what is included in this portion of the "suite" conveniently shielding them from being accountable for delivering any sort of features in an acceptable manner.

DesertRambler

I am also an IT Pro (Software Engineer, to be more specific) and I would also like better features offered in the Parental Controls. Top on my list are:

Searching, sorting, and filtering of the Web Activity Log
- Since the log contains every site hit, including the hundreds of ad links on the sites, it's hard to page through 100+ pages from a day's activity to scan blocked sites.
Clearer instructions on how to block a family of websites
- Do I have to include the "http://"?
- Can I exclude with wildcards? "*.ablockedwebsite.com"
Include scheduled blocking for Applications, as you have done with Websites.
- This is so I can block him from certain applications when he is doing homework, but allow them later.
Ability to group websites for scheduling (without completely blocking entire Internet access on a schedule) to make it easier to set a schedule on multiple websites at the same time. (School, After School)
More detail for the child/parent on the blocked page of why a site is blocked (as detailed by the original post)

I agree with all previous posts that this is an incomplete implementation of parental controls. The only reason I have NOT moved to another program is that I need the ability to put some websites on a schedule but allow or block others completely. Most parental control programs only allow you to schedule "access to the Internet" in its entirety, but I homeschool and need the ability to allow access to school websites during school hours while blocking most other sites that include their games and videos. So kudos to allowing that (even if it's tedious to setup.) But we need more in the way of management tools.