• With NetNanny 6.0, a parent does not need to watch over her child's shoulder when he browses the Internet.little computer specialist image by Renata Osinska from Fotolia.com
  
  The Internet offers an abundant amount of educational websites as well as entertaining activities and modes of communication. It also hosts content that is not appropriate for children of different age groups, and children may be eager to access sexual, violent or other adult content or participate in revealing communications without realizing the risk. NetNanny 6.0 is an Internet filtering program that parents can install to block improper content and monitor web activity.
  
  

User Profiles

• NetNanny 6.0 allows parents, guardians or network administrators to assign controls based on age. The software allows users to select one of the predefined age profiles: young child, pre-teen or teen. This is beneficial because some content may not be suitable for younger children or pre-teens; however, this content may be appropriate for teenagers. These settings not only take into consideration the web page destination to block out age inappropriate content. NetNanny blocks all ads when a parent selects the "young child" profile. Furthermore, age based profiles only allow users to play web games with suitable ratings. For instance, if NetNanny can determine that a game is "T" rated for teenagers, it will allow a teenager to play but not a young child. In addition to the pre-made profiles, parents can create a custom profile. When using NetNanny, every computer user can have a personalized profile.
  
  

Price

• Price can be a negative factor for consumers who wish to install this software on multiple computers. As of July 2010, the price for a one year subscription for a single system ranges between $30 and $40, depending on the retailer (the manufacturer no longer sells NetNanny 6.0 on its website). Consumers can add support for additional computers for a price of $19.95 per year. After the subscription expires, the software no longer filters web content. Therefore, customers must continue to pay for yearly subscriptions to use the service. However, subscriptions do provide customers with phone based support and product upgrades.
  
  

Social Networking Monitor

• The social networking monitoring is new in NetNanny 6.0, but it is not perfect. NetNanny monitors social networking sites such as Facebook and can even detect common acronyms that a child may be using such as "ASL" (age, sex, location) and "PLOS" (parent looking over shoulder). However, the software cannot detect manual "encyptions" such as spelling certain words backwards. The software can log all of a user's Facebook communications for a parent or guardian to inspect at a later date and time. This may be useful but it can also be time consuming. NetNanny does allow parents access to a child's profile information, images and friends list. If a child has lied about his or her age on a website, the program alerts the parent.
  
  

Remote Access

• Parents can access the NetNanny control panel remotely from another computer. Parents can have the software e-mail an alert when a child is accessing inappropriate material and, if the parent is at work, he or she can access the panel from any Internet enabled computer and change access settings. According to Neil J. Rubenking of PC Mag, these changes will take effect "almost immediately," ceasing improper browsing or communication activity.