image credit: https://pixabay.com/photos/kids-playing-connected-childhood-1253096/
There are certain days when I wish Amy had her nursery all five days of the week (and for a few hours over the weekends too if possible!). Does such secret wishes make me a bad mother, maybe they do but the havoc these toddlers create when at home is no news and I am sure I am not alone in my woes.
The Internet comes as the essential, unavoidable and always available nanny whose services can be used at your beck and call. It scores better than the T.V with Amy because she can watch her favorite cartoons over and over again giving me the necessary respite to get some work done and sometimes even grab a quick nap sitting (ever tried that?)
It was one of those days when I was busy hurrying up with dinner preparations after sitting Amy in front of the desktop with her favorite cartoons. After a few minutes, a few weird voices coming from the living room caught my attention. They were certainly not the cute, dubbed sheep and elephants voices from Amy’s cartoons.
I switched off the burner and rushed to the living room. I was horrified to find Amy watching an extremely violent and adult trailer for an upcoming movie. It seemed that she had accidentally clicked on the video while trying to watch the next episode of her cartoon.
I immediately switched the screens and put on her cartoon back. I spend the rest of the evening closely listening to what she was watching and all along the worry to keep her safe from such dangerous content, played in the back of my mind. Parental control software, yes that seemed to be the best solution. Now all I needed was some time to browse the internet and find the best one for Amy.
Co-incidentally it was around that time I received an Email from the Bitdefender’s online team, offering me a free sample of their new antivirus software and asking me to review it. Though it seemed like a tempting preposition for a blogger like me with an engineering background, I still decided to turn it down because I could not see the readers of The Eureka Life, finding any value in reading such a technical review.
Anyway so I moved ahead with my search for parental control software for Amy, it was then that I bumped into a familiar name while searching for parental control software’s online….Bitdefender, but they make Antivirus software’s, what has that got to do with online Parental control , I thought to myself. Everything, as I found out later!
Apart from the usual antivirus and firewall capabilities, Bitdefender Family Pack offers a password manager, parental controls and a Facebook scanner. I was genuinely intrigued and decided to research further.
What I found out a complete eye opener to the obviously technologically un-updated me. The antivirus software did much more than just spam control, taking internet security to the next level by offering a complete parental control system that is not just cloud based but also works across multiple PC’s and Android devices.
The best part was that it didn’t just relied on a database that categorizes sites as safe or unsafe but also analysed the page content. A hand kids past a misplaced believer.It gave me as the parent the option to not only view the complete log of all sites visited and blocked but also could be used to define a weekly schedule of when internet access is permitted.
That was enough reason for me to go back to my inbox and write back to the Bitdefender team that I was happy to review their product, curious to try out the parental control features I had read about and implement them.
I got a prompt response from their team with a license key number. Apart from installing Bitdefender’s Internet security software on the desktop, I have also installed it on Amy’s phone (yes she has a smart phone already!) which she views especially during long car rides to pacify her (and make sure she sits on her car seat without fidgeting and wailing). It helps me to keep a tab on Amy as I can now track her phone location on map.
Bitdefender Parental control also allows the parent to define school hours and night hours, view a phone number log for all calls and texts, to block contacts with specific numbers and to limit the child’s phone use during those periods.
Also it is great to get antivirus and spam control and save the extra bucks you would have to spend on the parental control software. Here’s a detailed review of the Bitdefender’s Internet Security software 2014 by PCMAG in case you would be interested to know is details about the other features of the software.
