Unfortunately in this day and age where the majority of families have access to the internet, it can sometimes be a dangerous place for children, especially without appropriate supervision. Whether it's surfing the net, using chat rooms or even downloading, some Internet Predators prey on these software technologies and unfortunately parents cannot realistically monitor their children in person 24 hours per day.

This is where Net Nanny comes into the picture and not only does it offer protection against Internet Predators but it also protects children from online bullying and considering that some bullying may lead to suicide, this is definitely a must have piece of software. Whether it's limiting their usage or supervising the usage, there are a number of features that this software package can do and best of all, it's now available on the Mac.

Features

• Easy-to-use setup assistant

• Includes presets for ease-of-use

• Anti-predator mode that works with all chat clients

• Block access to specific protocols, eg. HTTP, IM, P2P

• Blocks web page access to specific categories or sites

• Web filters are continually updated

• Works with 'safe search' feature of search engines

• Full logs of internet activity

In its essence, Net Nanny acts as a "virtual" nanny for parents by protecting their children from a variety of dangerous and offensive situations. By installing this software package on your Mac, it monitors and protects children from a variety of different internet technologies such as filtering out offensive words, preventing pornography from appearing on their screens and even monitoring chatrooms with extensive logs. These are just some of the features that Net Nanny for Mac covers and best of all, it's quite affordably priced at $49.95

The installation of Net Nanny automatically installed once the CD was detected by our Mac and after a few moments, our system had the option of ensuring that our children would be protected from a variety of situations. Another impressive feature of Net Nanny is that it requires very little hard drive space on your computer and does not become a resource hog, ensuring uninterrupted computing for all users.

System Requirements

• Operating System Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger®) or higher

• Processor Intel or PowerPC microprocessor

• Hard Drive Space 40MB free hard disk space

• Other Internet Connection

When the installation was completed, we had to configure the software and thankfully the software takes the user through these steps. For us, the most impressive feature of Net Nanny is that it silently monitors and protects your computer without unnecessary intervention.

By now, you may be thinking if this software really works and the short answer is yes. We tested this software with a variety of internet technologies and went straight to Google for our first test. After typing in some key search phrases, Net Nanny prevented any results from coming up.

We even typed a website directly and Net Nanny prevented us from accessing it. Other testing included peer to peer software packages, internet chat rooms (key words) and even FTP which the program prevented us from accessing.

When it comes to monitoring of internet chat, Net Nanny picks up on certain words and even phrases that can be directly e-mailed back to you. The beauty of the e-mail feature of Net Nanny is that the program even gives you a warning of what may be happening online, whether it's cyber bulling or another online predator. 

Of course, the internet is not all about pornography and Net Nanny can block a variety of hate sites, even hate site chat rooms, ensuring that your children are protected from these aspects. Whether your child is using Facebook, MySpace or a variety of other social networking sites, Net Nanny monitors these sites and even your child's profile, ensuring that only the correct people are viewing their profiles. It even monitors your child's profile to ensure that there is no misleading information.

Finally and probably the most impressive feature of Net Nanny is the remote management module of the program. This is ideal for parents wishing to manage their child's internet safety policy from work or even on a mobile phone. A scenario may have involved an alert regarding cyber bullying and from a remote connection, the parent can then change the settings, ensuring greater protection.

In conclusion, Net Nanny comes highly recommended by Impulse Gamer, however it should be noted that parents cannot rely on just Net Nanny alone. Children need to be supported, guided and protected while using the internet and parents should always be involved at certain stages to ensure that their children are best protected. Thankfully Net Nanny works as a positive tool for both parents and children, protecting them from a variety of nefarious websites, chats and the like but best of all, at an extremely affordable cost and with all the bells and whistles.