KSnet Manager

From games to movies and cartoons, there are a lot of Internet temptations for children, who might end up spending more time in front of the computer than recommended. And it's not just that that makes parents look for a good parental control software, but also the potentially dangerous or inappropriate online content that a child might be exposed to.

Designed to guarantee peace of mind to the parents and safety to the children, KSnet Manager is a parental control tool that allows adults to impose computer usage restrictions to their little ones. With its help, parents can decide what applications can be accessed and which should be blocked, what websites mustn't be visited, and how much time their child must use the PC.

The setup runs smoothly, except that it is interrupted at some point to let you enter the mandatory monitoring password. This key prevents unauthorized access to the application and its settings, for obvious reasons. The KSnet Manager service runs in the background and logs the activity of all the monitored accounts.

There are two configuration modes, namely "Normal" and "Quick". While the latter copies an existing configuration to another user account, the first allows you to go through a series of steps to decide upon Internet access times, restricted websites and applications, and additional features. Needless to say, you will have to choose the normal setup if you are running KSnet Manager for the first time.

KSnet Manager detects all the Windows accounts and allows you to decide which should be monitored and which not. For each monitored account, you can set Internet access time limits for every day of the week. And even if you decide to grant your children unlimited online access, you can still configure a set of websites that will be inaccessible or timed. Online gaming can be controlled using special websites, which can only be accessed for a user-defined amount of time each day.

Aside from Internet access, you might want to prevent your children from launching private applications, which should go in the blocked programs section. Moreover, you can use KSnet Manager to restrict access to installed games and prevent the deployment of others.

KSnet Manager puts you in charge of your children's computer activity, allowing you to define restrictions to teach them what is a fair time management and how it can help them. Unlike other applications of its kind, it cannot take screenshots of the desktop, and it does not report on every action taken on the PC. Nevertheless, it does integrate a keylogger and comes with email notifications.