Symantec Debuts Norton Online Family


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February 17, 2009 4:10 PM PST

Symantec debuts Norton Online Family

by Seth Rosenblatt

Known for its security software, Symantec on Tuesday launched a new program aimed at educating parents about their children's online usage. Norton Online Family, now available in beta, is a parental control suite with multiple levels of restriction and an emphasis on usage reporting.

Citing a Rochester Institute of Technology study that found a huge gap between the percentage of parents versus children who report no online supervision, Symantec says that Online Family is intended to bridge that gap by "fostering communication" between parents and their kids. According to the RIT study, only 7 percent of parents think their children have no online supervision, while 66 percent of kids think they go unsupervised.

To address that, Online Family uses a desktop client called the Norton Safety Minder for Windows and Mac that reports to the parents' Norton Family account with options to e-mail notifications, too. Norton Online Family features parental-controlled customization levels based on the computer's user accounts, so that multi-child families can have different monitoring levels for different kids. It runs in the system tray, too, so that its presence is obvious to all users.

Story & Screenshots CNet News - http://news.cnet.com/security/

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