What is Norton Family and what does it do?

Norton Family is a parental management suite from the revered antivirus vendor, which covers PCs and mobiles. It’s an in-depth product that seeks to make sure that your children keep secure online.

But how does it do this, and precisely what options are included?

In this text, we’re going to offer a breakdown of the performance included with Norton Family and what gadgets it helps, earlier than discussing how good this suite is for parental management duties.

What is Norton Family?

Norton Family is a parental management suite that is designed to maintain your youngsters secure once they’re online – or offline for that matter (more on that later). It quite niftily gives safety for all of your children, regardless of what number of, with limitless gadgets coated.

The type of options supplied right here embrace monitoring to see what your offspring is as much as online, the flexibility to limit gadget utilization to sure instances, and after all defenses to maintain children from stumbling onto any nastiness whereas looking the online.

Note that you simply additionally get this parental management bundle in the event you purchase the more superior safety suites from this agency, specifically Norton 360 Deluxe or Norton 360 Premium (in these suites it’s known as Parental Control quite than Norton Family, however it’s the identical factor).

Norton Family Desktop and Mobile App Interfaces

(Image credit score: Norton)

What gadgets can I take advantage of Norton Family on?

Norton Family may be put in on limitless gadgets, and helps not simply Windows PCs, but in addition Android and iOS gadgets (the one factor you don’t get right here is help for Macs, mainly). Windows 10 (however not Windows 10 S Mode) and Windows 8 are supported – however not the Edge browser – and on cell, you could be operating Android 6.0 or higher, or when you've got an Apple gadget, iOS 13 or newer.

Norton Family: what options does it have?

Want to know what this suite is able to? Let’s take a look at a number of the highlights of Norton Family’s characteristic set. Note that some talents are solely accessible on sure platforms – so app blocking, for example, is simply on Android – and we’ll flag this up wherever this is the case.

Web Supervision

A core aspect of any piece of parental management software program, this allows you to see the place your children are looking on the net, and facilitates the blocking of inappropriate websites. It’s attainable to dam content material over an entire host of various classes (not simply the standard choices regarding pornography, medication and so forth).

Time Supervision

As the title suggests, this enables for setting cut-off dates and managing when your children can use their gadgets, blocking them off at bedtime or perhaps meal instances (or you should utilize ‘Instant Lock’ to briefly, however immediately, block a tool).

School Time

With residence education maybe nonetheless in your thoughts following lockdowns in some international locations, this characteristic helps to handle distant studying on the kid’s gadget, holding them centered on work and not permitting any distractions by limiting web entry strictly to academic content material (which may very well be helpful for homework time, too).

Search Supervision

This helps you to monitor your baby’s web looking actions to see in the event that they’re in search of something inappropriate. It additionally implements Norton’s Safe Search to filter out unsuitable search outcomes. Furthermore, movies watched at YouTube are monitored and you'll be able to see a thumbnail and description to rapidly allow you to choose whether or not a considered clip is perhaps something doubtlessly dodgy.

Norton Family Location Monitoring on a mobile phone

(Image credit score: Norton)

Mobile App Supervision

With this characteristic you'll be able to see what apps your children have downloaded, and block any that you simply really feel are unsuitable. Note, nevertheless, this this is for Android gadgets solely, so iOS customers are overlooked right here (that mentioned, this isn’t Norton’s fault, as the rationale is wrapped up in the way in which Apple implements its cell OS with tight safety measures).

Location Supervision

For dad and mom nervous about the place their baby is perhaps not when online, however in the actual world as an alternative, Norton Family gives a full system of location monitoring (and a 30-day historical past of the place they’ve been) for each Android and iOS mobiles. Alert Me is an extra characteristic tied in with this which delivers automated alerts when a baby reaches sure outlined places (faculty, residence and so forth), with impressively in-depth choices and controls for these features.

Monthly/Weekly Reports

Some equally in-depth experiences are supplied on all the pieces your children have performed, and these may be accessed from a well-organized web portal.

How good is Norton Family?

Norton has a very good status inside the safety world and the Norton antivirus engine is persistently ranked extremely by the impartial check labs. That, after all, isn’t strictly related to the Norton Family product itself, however the pedigree of the developer is all the time a consideration and this is a high quality parental management suite which blends energy and comfort with some nice filtering and location controls - our Norton Family evaluate goes into more element.

The asking worth for Norton Family is greater than affordable on condition that it delivers help for a limiteless quantity of gadgets, so regardless of how massive your loved ones – and how a lot package is owned therein – you’ll be coated with one subscription.

That’s a formidable worth proposition, however the different consideration is whether or not you would possibly wish to plump for Norton 360 Deluxe as an alternative, which incorporates the Parental Control module.

Now, Norton 360 Deluxe is a bit dearer in the event you go by the beneficial asking costs, however the web safety suite is invariably closely discounted, and after price-cutting is usually solely a bit dearer than Norton Family (if not the identical worth, at instances). The trade-off is that solely 5 gadgets are supported by Norton 360 Deluxe, but when that’s all you want, you then get a fully-fledged safety suite with an entire host of additional options for not much more cash.

It’s value fascinated about, actually, however the backside line is each these merchandise supply good worth, and feature-wise they examine favorably to rivals – very favorably within the case of Norton Family.