Popular culture credits the inimitable Yogi Berra with the quip, "It's déjà vu all over again". That's exactly how I felt when I loaded up AVG Family Safety ($19.99/year direct for three licenses) for the first time. Parts of it looked incredibly familiar. A little sleuthing revealed that all of its feature screens directly matched screens in Bsecure Online v6.16 ($49.95 direct for three licenses, 4.5 stars), PCMag's current Editors' Choice for parental control.
Editors' Note: As of March, 2015, AVG no longer distributes this product. If you're looking for a parental control utility, please check out our current Editors' Choice products, Qustodio Parental Control 2015 and ContentWatch Net Nanny 7.
The resemblance is perfectly logical, because the AVG product is a licensed and rebranded edition of Bsecure Online. The biggest difference is the price. Bsecure costs $49.99/year to protect three computers and $19.99/year for each additional license. AVG asks just $19.99/year for the same three licenses and $5/year for additional ones. AVG Family Safety is definitely a good deal, though this low price won't last forever.
Anything said about AVG in this review also applies to Bsecure. The only Bsecure feature not found in AVG Family Safety is more of an add-on service than an integral component. Like Saavi Accountability ($108 direct for four licenses, 1.5 stars), Bsecure can optionally take away control of protection settings, to help users who are struggling with their own online porn addiction. Those users are a tiny slice of the market. It's not surprising AVG doesn't offer this service, not at their prices.
Similar Products
Net Nanny
McAfee Family Protection 2.0
Norton Family
Getting Started
AVG Family Safety offers full remote configuration and management for the multi-computer home. That's the current standard in parental control. Norton Online Family Premier ($49.99 direct, 4 stars) and Windows Live Family Safety 2011 (Free, 3 stars) offer full remote control, as do Trend Micro Online Guardian for Families ($49.95 direct, 2.5 stars) and PureSight Owl 2011 ($59.90 direct for three licenses, 3.5 stars). Net Nanny 6.5 ($39.99 direct, 4.5 stars) is the most prominent holdout; it still needs a full installation on each protected computer.
After installing AVG Family Safety you'll define a profile for each child. Age-specific templates help by assigning an appropriate initial configuration. You install a small local client that enforces house rules on each protected computer. To complete the initial configuration you associate each profile with a user account on each computer.
This does mean you need a separate Windows account for each child, unless you want to monitor their behavior en masse. Trend Micro, Puresight, and others don't require separate Window accounts, but each user (parents included) must log in to the parental control system before going online.
Blocking Bad Sites
AVG Family Safety filters out 61 distinct categories of undesirable Web sites. Parents can choose one of four age templates to automatically configure which categories will be blocked, or pick and choose categories for a custom template.
Like all the best content filtering products, AVG is browser-independent. It resists a simple network command that has disabled some products, among them Trend Micro. And it has the ability to block undesirable URLs even when they use a secure HTTPS connection.
Puresight and Trend Micro can't block HTTPS URLs. If the kids can find a secure anonymizing proxy they can do a total end-run around these parental control products.
Net Nanny goes further, adding the ability to actually filter HTTPS traffic. That means even if the kids did manage to access a secure proxy Net Nanny could still block bad sites. AVG Family Safety and Net Nanny also block local proxy apps like UltraSurf and ProxyTunnel. Teenage hackers just aren't going to escape AVG's content filtering.
Parents who value communication over control can give older children a password that will override site blocking (the override will be logged, of course). It can also be configured to warn about bad sites without blocking access, or just monitor silently.
Ratings-Based Media Control
Like Safe Eyes 6.0 ($49.95 direct, 4 stars), AVG Family Safety can block access to video clips based on their MPAA or FCC rating. There's no standard for matching clips with ratings, though, so the two companies have to do their own analysis.
AVG Family Safety can also block games based on their ESRB rating. Net Nanny goes farther, allowing fine-tuned blocking based on ESRB descriptors and game-by-game exceptions. Both can block access to iTunes songs marked as having explicit lyrics; so can Safe Eyes.
Simple Time Scheduling
AVG offers a simple weekly grid in one-hour increments that defines when each child is allowed on the Internet. It gets current time data from the Internet, so it can't be fooled by tweaking the system clock. That's it for Internet time control. AVG doesn't add the daily or weekly cap on Internet use found in many other products.
IM Monitoring
AVG Family Safety monitors and records instant messaging conversations carried on using IM clients from Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, AOL and ICQ. It will also record the outgoing portion of conversations from other chat clients, and its program blocking feature can prevent use of clients that can't be monitored.
A child who finds a non-blocked third-party client could theoretically use it to converse without being monitored by AVG. Net Nanny or Puresight would catch the conversation regardless, because they monitor IM at the protocol level, regardless of the client program used.
AVG Family Safety simply logs IM conversations. Net Nanny looks for danger signs in the conversation and explains its findings in the log. It can even be configured to only record problem conversations. Puresight offers tough protection against cyberbullying. Its content analysis isn't fooled by slang, odd spelling, or leet-speak. If it detects a dangerous conversation it can cut off communication, block further contact, and e-mail parents a warning.
Program Control
Built into AVG Family Safety is the ability to block programs in specific categories that are subject to misuse. By default it blocks programs in its P2P, Proxy, and Malware categories. Parents can choose to also block specific IM, game, media-player, and email programs. Kids won't evade program control. I couldn't fool it by copying or renaming blocked programs the way I did with Safe Eyes.
Social Networking
Social Networking
AVG's approach to social networking is simple. If a child logs in to any of over 70 social networking sites, it captures the login credentials. Parents then have full access to the child's account. Before performing this capture AVG warns children that their account credentials will be captured.
AVG also watches social networking posts for keywords that may indicate an inappropriate post. On detecting such an event it sends an alert to parents. A glitch in the social site tracking feature can cause Facebook posts to be duplicated for Firefox 3.6 users. Bsecure and AVG are working on a fix.
Trend Micro doesn't support as many social sites as AVG, but it gives parents more help. Its online report summarizes recent social networking activity for an easy overview along with a link to the account itself. SafetyWeb ($100 direct, 4 stars) helps parents protect a child's online reputation by reviewing what's visible to the public. Norton can warn parents when kids use a false age on a social site.
In a way, AVG offers the ultimate control with its capture of login credentials. Parents can do anything up to and including locking the kid out by changing the account password. Of course, any product's control over social networking is foiled if the child only logs in from computers outside the home.
Safe Search
Google, Bing, and Yahoo all include a feature that filters out inappropriate search terms and search results. Like many other parental control products, AVG forces Safe Search in sites that support it. By default it blocks access to search sites that lack this feature. It will also proactively cancel a search if it detects keywords such as "naked" in the search.
Real-Time Alerts
Parents can configure AVG Family Safety to send an alert any time a child tries to access a blocked site or uses a banned keyword in a social networking post. Alerts can go by e-mail or by text message to multiple recipients.
A similar feature in Puresight includes the option to set a threshold rather than alert on every little event. For example, it can send an email alert after a specific number of blocked access attempts. Safe Eyes also allows threshold-based control, and it can send alerts by text message, e-mail, or telephone.
Even if parents can't respond to alerts, the Safety Lock feature can take action automatically. If a child is trying hard to access inappropriate sites this feature will terminate all Internet access until a parent unlocks it. A slider determines the feature's sensitivity. At its hair-trigger high level it locks up if three of the last 16 URLs were blocked.
Remote Reporting
Parents can log in to AVG Family Safety from any Internet-equipped computer and get a detailed view of each child's activity over the last 15 days. For each child, a summary page charts the most visited site categories and breaks down categories that were blocked. It also lists the most visited web sites along with recent blocked sites.
Every URL the child visited gets logged by AVG, but by default only the questionable ones are shown. The log date/time stamps each URL and displays the category or categories that got this URL blocked. A similar list reports all Web searches, including the date/time, the search site, and the exact search terms. The list can be overwhelming. Norton lists only sites the child actively visited, not advertising URLs or other third-party content, which helps keep the volume down.
There's not much on the social sites page, just a list of all the accounts whose login credentials were captured. To see what the kids have been doing, you log in for full access to one of the account.
As noted, AVG records all instant messaging conversations carried on through supported clients. However, in the interest of limiting possible misuse, the saved conversations can only be reviewed on the local system, not through a remote connection.
Some micro-managing parents may want to pore over the list of every program that the child directly or indirectly launched. This list includes the start and stop time and duration, when available, and whether AVG blocked the program.
High End Bonus Features
AVG offers a free mobile app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch that blocks porn sites. You could install this on your child's phone, though to enforce its use you'll have to disable Safari and the App Store. And of course it won't help with an Android, BlackBerry, or other smartphones.
Never fear! The amazing Whole Home Filtering feature can block bad sites on any device that connects to your home network, be it a smartphone, game console, or Internet-aware refrigerator. It automatically configures your home router to filter Web sites based on the profile you specify. A local copy of AVG Family Safety overrides the whole home filtering, so parents aren't subject to control.
Hardware solutions like NETBLOX ($149 direct, 2 stars) or the more effective iBoss Home Parental Control Router/Firewall ($109.90 direct, 4 stars) replace your router to filter access for the entire network. AVG's whole home filtering gets the same effect without having to replace the router.
A Good Deal
Although competitors may outperform AVG in certain specific areas, none of them has this product's comprehensive parental control protection. None but Bsecure Online v6.16 ($49.95 direct for three licenses, 4.5 stars), that is, since this product is feature-wise identical. AVG joins Bsecure to share our Editors' Choice designation for parental control. At its current price, AVG is a significantly better deal.
More Parental control reviews:
AVG Family Safety offers exactly the same comprehensive mix of parental control features as Editors' Choice Bsecure Online. Naturally--it's a licensed version of Bsecure. At its current price, though, it's a much better deal.
Like What You're Reading?
Sign up for SecurityWatch newsletter for our top privacy and security stories delivered right to your inbox.
This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.
Thanks for signing up!
Your subscription has been confirmed. Keep an eye on your inbox!
Sign up for other newsletters
)