About a week ago, a buzzword amongst some of the Twitter moms was filtering and monitoring software for the kids. You really can’t be too careful. The Internet is a wonderful place, but holy cow is it full of trash. What a shame. Like television– what a wonderful tool for ministry and education– but rather for enriching people’s lives, it makes them poorer by filling their thoughts and hearts with evil, degenerate trash (most of the time). I certainly hate to see the Internet becoming this way!
Anyway, there are some very good reasons for installing filtering and monitoring software on the computer. The word “keylogger” has negative connotations, but for keeping an eye on kids and keeping an eye on wayward employees, monitoring and filtering software is a good idea. I’ve tried out a few freebies in my time. I haven’t been terribly happy with any of them. They are either lacking something, too bloated, or so buggy that I wind up fixing my computer! I am heartily in favor of purchasing software of this nature. You have more leverage with the company, should something go wrong, and free software makers rarely offer any kind of meaningful support. SpyAgent or SentryPC look like something good for children’s computers– it’s a simple program that blocks unsuitable Internet content, logs activity, and notifies parents. I’d really like to see a very sophisticated filter that would, say, allow kids to view good YouTube videos but block bad YouTube videos. I know that’s probably too specific for any software. Only a good parent/child relationship can do that. But still, I HATE it when my kids accidentally stumble onto disgusting images and videos!! Grr!!
Remember, in some cases it is illegal to install spyware on a computer. For parents and business owners, it is a good idea– just make sure you inform the computer user of the software.
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