CYBERsitter Reviewer's Comments
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Our number 2 ranked product and "TopTenREVIEWS Silver Award" Winner CYBERsitter from Solid Oak Software is an excellent product. The overblocking (websites that should not have been blocked) and underblocking (websites that should have been blocked, but were not) worked pretty well in most cases, as good as any of the products we evaluated. One feature unique to CYBERsitter was that it was the only product to include a basic email–filtering option.
CYBERsitter Screenshots. Click to Enlarge
Feature Set:
One useful function that is available that none of the other products have, is the ability to scan your hard drive for objectionable material. It also will find any types of spying programs that may have been installed on your computer, either inadvertently or intentionally. CYBERsitter also had the most features out of any of the products reviewed. CYBERsitter was the only product to include a basic email–filtering feature, even though this feature wouldn’t replace a typical Spam filtering product.
Ease of Use:
CYBERsitter was a little tricky to get the browser to work in conjunction with the filtering. Making sure you have the correct settings with the “Default to Active Filtering Mode” turned on will make the application work smoothly.
Ease of Installation:
It was easy to install. There were some problems during the setup process while trying to enter an email address. Our system locked up. Later, after reading the documentation, it was discovered that the email notification system doesn’t work in Windows 2000. This is a minor bug. This problem did not appear when running on Windows XP.
Filtering Effectiveness:
The overblocking (websites that should not have been blocked) and underblocking (websites that should have been blocked, but were not) worked pretty well in most cases, as good as any of the products we evaluated.
Summary:
CYBERsitter could consider as an improvement to have a message appear when something got blocked. When a blocked site is encountered, sometimes a blank browser appears with no text or message. Other times it displays a “Page Not Found” message. Some would argue this is a good feature, because children don’t realize they are being filtered. This could be a little confusing until you get used to it. Overall, CYBERsitter is an excellent product with a few minor weaknesses.
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