Symantec's New Approach to Internet Monitoring: Norton Online Family

Symantec launched their beta version of Norton Online Family today, furthering Norton's shift from traditional software to online services as well as heralding in a new way of looking at internet monitoring. The beta is available now for both PC and Mac users, and offers an insight on the future of proactive parental monitoring.



Symantec's new approach is actually quite innovative, and surprisingly proactive, encouraging communication between parents and children.

The traditional way of internet monitoring has consisted of setting up barriers in the form of restricted sites and keeping an eye on bad keywords. Or you could always take the stealth route, installing a monitoring program and secretly watching your child's every move.

Norton Online Family takes a whole new direction. The service still lets parents see what their kids are doing (time spent, terms searched, sites visited, friends contacted), and the tools make it easy for adults to get an overview without seeing every detail.

But rather than setting limits or secretly watching, Norton encourages communication between parent and child. Kids will know that their activity is being monitored, and their parents have an opportunity to have discussions with them on what sort of content they are accessing. Of course there are still a number of customizable levels of restriction and additional advanced tools to accommodate the desired level of monitoring (what's best for the parents AND the kids).

What a novel idea; an innovative approach that reflects legitimate parenting techniques. Encouraging discussion and tools for parents to learn not just about their child's online content, but context. If nothing else, Norton Online Family will help parents learn what their children are actually interested in/concerned over/curious about, and what sources they're getting their information (probably Facebook, Wikipedia, and whatever comes through Google).

Needless to say, we're pretty intrigued by the new Norton Online Family. Check out the beta test for free to see the interface and more advanced tools. And don't overlook our current lineup and reviews of internet monitoring software, internet filter software, or even parental time control software. Or check out some more great parenting ideas in these posts:

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