"Protect your Children and Your Privacy Online!" Net Nanny 5 is the latest internet filtering software that protects your children from the dangers of the internet and is also ideal for businesses who wish to limit the way their staff access the internet. The installation of Net Nanny 5 was extremely easy and took under a minute to install the software on the system. The only downside to the installation was that it required you to reboot your computer without giving you the option to cancel.  After the reboot was complete, a configuration window appeared for Net Nanny that allowed you to finish installing the software. Net Nanny then prompted you to setup a user account for your computer. The standard account called "Anybody" has a number of options that include; Web Site Blocking Level (Allows you restrict web sites on a range of 1 - 4, e.g. Level 3 blocks all web sites except family friendly ones) Blocking Options (Allows you to block cookies and manually add web sites) Filtering (Filters certain phrases on the Web, IRC, Newsgroups and Plain Text messages) Applications (Allows you block certain applications such as IRC Chat rooms and file trading) Time Limits (Limit daily internet access for users) Net Nanny 5 is a memory resident program that blocks all unwanted internet content from being show on your computer. Once the software was installed, I set the account level to 2 and tried to do a search on google for an obscene word. The result came back as a blank page with the word hashed out.  When trying to access web pages that contained adult content, the page came back as "This Content is Blocked by Net Nanny" and prevented any access to the page. The program also allowed for an additional filtering system that lets you add your own phrases and words that may be blocked on search engines.

Net Nanny also keeps a log of all web pages visited and search words that people may have typed so that you can trace where the person has been visiting on the internet. Even IRC Chats can be logged and is recorded by Net Nanny 5. Apart from protecting your children from the dangers of the internet, Net Nanny also supports various functions that will benefit everyday net users. For example, Net Nanny 5 can also disable all annoying popup windows and even disable cookies. Various newsgroups can also be prohibited and you can even add your own newsgroups if needed.

Another feature of Net Nanny is that it can also limit what programs are allowed to be run on the computer, thus limiting your computer to only certain programs. If internet time is a priority, Net Nanny 5 allows you to limit internet usage for certain users, for example, you can only allow users to connect to the internet between 4 to 5pm per day. And if users think they can bypass the time limit, the program also supports a time tampering function that prevents this from occurring.

In conclusion I would highly recommend Net Nanny 5 to parents who are weary of their children using the internet. As the old saying goes, "it is better to be safe than sorry" which is extremely true in this world without no boundaries, the internet. Apart from protection your children from harmful internet content, it is also a useful application for employers who want to limit their employees use of the internet as it restricts certain web sites and even keeps a log of which sites were visited. Highly recommended to parents and even businesses.