What is Net Nanny? What parents need to know

Net Nanny is a parental control software that helps parents monitor and manage their children’s online activity. It achieves this with a comprehensive set of tools that includes web filtering, screen time limits and app blocking.

Net Nanny is available on iOS, Windows and macOS. It costs more than other parental control apps. The cheapest package costs $39.99/year and only covers one Windows or macOS device. For $54.99/year you can manage 5 Windows, macOS or iOS devices, and $89.99/year will allow you up to 20 devices.

Setting up Net Nanny is relatively straightforward. Download Net Nanny on every device you want to monitor. Then open the app and sign into your profile and assign the device to the child it belongs to. Your child will be unable to install Net Nanny without inputting the password.

You can manage parental controls through a dashboard on your browser or in the mobile app. From this dashboard, you can manage all of the specific devices owned by each child.

From the parental dashboard, you can manage a wide array of parental controls including:

• Screen time limits: Allows you to set screen time limits for specific days of the week. This limit carries across all devices assigned to the child, so they can not attempt to use their tablet if they run out of time on their phone.
• App blocking: You can block apps using Net Nanny. On iOS, the app disconnects from the internet when blocked, allowing children to still use it offline. Additionally, you can not block every app on iOS, only ones on a predetermined list.
• App filtering: Net Nanny can filter content on social media apps, so that your child is not exposed to inappropriate or upsetting content. Net Nanny supports all major social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.”.
• Web filtering: You can manage how your child uses their browser with web filtering. Using filtering, you can choose whether to allow, alert or block websites based on the category of content on the site, with these categories including drugs, suicide and pornography. Allow and block determine whether your child can access a site, while alert lets your child access the site but sends you an alert when they do. You can also add custom categories to filter or choose specific websites to block. There is also a profanity filter which censors any swear words your child comes across online.
• Location settings: By using GPS on their mobile, Net Nanny allows parents to view their child’s live locations on a map. You can also set up a geofence, which lets you set a boundary on the map, and you will receive an alert if your child leaves this boundary.

• Comprehensive suite of parental control tools
• Strong web filtering and censoring
• Social media filtering
• Location tracking and geofencing

While Net Nanny does have a wide array of parental controls, the currently available version of the app does not support Android devices, so if your child owns an Android mobile it would be better if you choose a different monitoring app to keep them safe.

The filters and controls on Net Nanny can be circumvented by some browsers, such as Tor.  Using filtering settings, you could make it almost impossible to access the websites and pages that Tor can be downloaded from. However, if your child does get access to Tor it will make all of your controls obsolete. Having a conversation with your child about the importance and reasons for the controls will make it less likely that they try and find a way around them.