The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has seen more of us at home than ever, with our children having to abandon school for home-learning. In an effort to promote best safety practice online, antivirus firm Norton LifeLock is making its Family package free for six months.
With Norton Family, users can control the sites that their children visit, with website locks and parental reporting, available via a dedicated app.
With an increase in the number of people working and learning from home – including younger kids – we also look at other ways to stay safe online.
More on this – Best Tech to Keep Your Kids Educated and Entertained at Home
What’s Included in Norton Family
With kids now forced to spend the usual school day at home, rather than at school, that’s a lot of internet hours that may require a little extra parental policing.
Norton Family is designed to help parents control the sites and media that their children look at online. It does this through a combination of restricting the content that is available online, and putting limits on internet time.
Norton Family features include:
- Web Supervision – Website blocking tools that restrict access to sites that aren’t child-friendly. Parents can whitelist sites and choose which ones to block.
- Search Supervision – This feature relays the topic matters that your child is searching for back to you, enabling parents to see exactly what their children are looking for online.
- Time Supervision – An automated time lock, set by the parents, that ceases device activity at certain times of the day, or on days of the week.
- Video Supervision – This records a list of all the videos that your child has been watching on their device, as well as a snippet of the video.
- Mobile App Supervision – Allows parents to see the apps that have been downloaded on the child’s device.
- Regular reports – Parents can be emailed reports of their child’s online activities, either weekly or monthly.
How to Get Norton Family Free for Six Months
Norton Family usually costs around $50 for the first year’s access, so getting six months free is a decent deal. Of course, you can choose to cancel it within this period to ensure that you aren’t charged beyond the initial six months – or you may just find you’re happy to keep going with the software.
To get your trial, visit Norton, and sign up for the trial directly on its site. It’s worth noting that the offer runs until the 31st May, so don’t leave it too long if you are interested.
Before taking out the trial, we suggest checking the recommendations, as not all devices are supported. For example, the package doesn’t work with Macs.
See our guide to Norton vs McAfee to learn which we rate best
Tips for Protecting Yourself Online
It’s important to protect yourself and your family online, but a tool like Norton Family is just one of the ways to ensure that you don’t succumb to fraudulent hacking attempts or have your personal details taken. There are also other important ways to ensure your online security isn’t compromised:
Password Managers – With each of us jugging multiple passwords across various sites, its easy to get sloppy and misplace our details, or use the same password for different accounts. A password manager mitigates all this bad practice through several features, including creating secure passwords for you, remembering your important details so you can sign in with the click of a button, and alerting you to potential breaches.
Anti-virus Software – It doesn’t matter how careful you are online, anyone can be susceptible to a virus or hacking attempt, be it through an unsecured website or an email phishing. You might even infect your device through something as simple as plugging in an infected USB stick. Here’s where antivirus software can help, as it will spot the threats before they can infect your computer, quarantining them and disposing of them before they can do any damage.
VPN – VPNs aren’t just for watching Netflix abroad or catching up with sporting events (although they are great for that). They are also excellent tools for hiding your identity online. VPNs bypass your usual internet server, making it hard to trace your personal details, as well as your activity. Not only are they useful for at home, they also mean that you can access public Wi-Fi spots without too much concern.
