Cybersentinel - add your feedback here and have the chance to win an 8 gig iPod Touch

[carriemumsnet]

Thanks to everyone who has volunteered to be part of the CyberSentinel product trial. Hopefully you've now downloaded their free software and have had a play with the product.
This thread is for your feedback - please answer the questions below and add any additional comments and questions. Everyone who adds feedback here will be entered into a prize draw to win an 8gig iPod Touch

CyberSentinel are also hosting an an e-safety event in London on 9th June. Professor Tanya Byron is the key speaker and Anna Richardson is going to host the day. They are looking for a mum to talk about their experiences on e-safety and children at this event. There will be media present as well as approximately 100 guests, mainly Local Authority representatives from across the U.K. They are also looking for folks to to act as media case studies. If you're interested in either of these opportunities please email [email protected].
And now here are the questions....

1. How easy was it to install? Very, quite, not very, not at all easy - if not easy, please say what happened
   
2. Once installed, was it simple to use or complicated?
   
3. Did you use the web console to see a summary of your children?s web activity? If so, how do you find this?
   
4. Did you customise the word library to monitor for the use of your own words (such as your child?s mobile phone number or school name)? Was this easy?
   
5. Did you learn anything new about what your children do online? If so, what (say in general terms)
   
6. Do you think CyberSentinel helped you keep your children safe online? What was the best aspect of this?
   
7. You currently have a free licence to use this product for one year - once that year is up do you think you would purchase this product? The cost is £25
   
8. Any other comments/ questions.....
   
   Thanks
   
   MNHQ

[MrsWeasley]

1. How easy was it to install? Very, quite, not very, not at all easy - if not easy, please say what happened EASY
   
2. Once installed, was it simple to use or complicated? SIMPLE
   
3. Did you use the web console to see a summary of your children?s web activity? If so, how do you find this? TRIED TO BUT IT SLOWED MY PC UP SO MUCH I LOST THE WILL TO CARRY ON
   
4. Did you customise the word library to monitor for the use of your own words (such as your child?s mobile phone number or school name)? Was this easy? YES AND YES
   
5. Did you learn anything new about what your children do online? If so, what (say in general terms) NO
   
6. Do you think CyberSentinel helped you keep your children safe online? What was the best aspect of this? NO
   
7. You currently have a free licence to use this product for one year - once that year is up do you think you would purchase this product? The cost is £25 NO WOULNT PURCHASE
   
8. Any other comments/ questions.....
   IT REALLY DID SLOW MY PC UP SO MUCH THAT IT MADE DOING ANYTHING ON THE PC A LONG LABORIOUS TASK IT ALSO DIDNT PICK UP A LOT OF THE WORDS IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE LOOKING FOR, MAYBE IT WAS BECUASE THERE WORDS WERE USED ON OTHER CHAT SITES LIKE YOU TUBE, BEBO. ETC I HAVE USED UNINSTALLED IT AND THE PC IS RUNNING BACK AT A NORMAL RATE. IT WAS SO SLOW IT TOOK MINUTES RATHER THAN SECONDS LOOK UP AN INTERNET SITE AND USING MUMSNET PAGE WAS SO SLOW I GAVE UP TRYING

[dobby2001]

1. How easy was it to install? Very, quite, not very, not at all easy - if not easy, please say what happened
   
   Very easy to install.
   
   
2. Once installed, was it simple to use or complicated?
   
   Very simple to use.
   
   
3. Did you use the web console to see a summary of your children?s web activity? If so, how do you find this?
   
   Yes, used it, it was clear, understandable and interesting.
   
   
4. Did you customise the word library to monitor for the use of your own words (such as your child?s mobile phone number or school name)? Was this easy?
   
   Did not customise it.
   
   
5. Did you learn anything new about what your children do online? If so, what (say in general terms)
   
   Did not learn anything new about my child but DID learn about how much porn my hubby was watching
   
   
6. Do you think CyberSentinel helped you keep your children safe online? What was the best aspect of this?
   
   I found it a very useful product, just not for my children
   
   
7. You currently have a free licence to use this product for one year - once that year is up do you think you would purchase this product? The cost is £25
   
   possibly.
   
   
8. Any other comments/ questions.....
   
   I found the information collected on all family very interesting although the average time figures were VERY conservative - or maybe i really DO just spend 5 mins a day on mumsnet

[gill89]

I have had a really busy week and haven't been on the PC much [other than to demo my excitement to Ann]

THANK YOU so much.

Can't wait for it to arrive.

In the meantime i am trying to work out how to downlaod it to another machine?????

[AnnMumsnet]

Pleased to announce the winner of the 8gig iPod Touch is gill89 , who's very excited! Many thanks to all for their contributions.

[lottiegirl]

Well finally been able to log in I have had 8 capture reports however no captures are in the console, going to take it off the computer mand reload it back on as I don't know why there is no captures when i am getting reports. I can see log activity lists but cannot work out what triggered the alerts. will do this in the morning now.

[AnnMumsnet]

hi guys, we're keeping it open for a bit longer to give as many folks as possible the chance to try the product - glad you liked the feedback from the client.
MNHQ

[BONKERZ]

am able to log into mine fine BUT have not been getting notifications of captures despite there being over 50 and my capture limit set at 30!!
Must add though i did laugh cos about 20 of the captures were for keyword SEX LIVE.......was getting worried DH had been looking at stuff but when i checked it was a cricket web page ESsexlive! lol

[lottiegirl]

I had the email re updates and changes, glad that our responses have been addressed.
Tried to log on to the console today to see the effects of the changes, but cannot get on.

I get the following error "The connection to console.cybersentinel.co.uk has terminated unexpectedly. Some data may have been transferred." but I can access all other internet sites wonder if others have the same problem?I gat this several times on 2 computers.Anyone else get this or just me?

I also haven't had any captures for a few days despite sons being on the net, but now don't know if that is the changes, or inaccurate capture problems.
I last checked the console Friday.Even if the feedback trial has finished we have the licience for 1 year so it should still be working

[BONKERZ]

just had email from cybersentinal, does this mean that we have finished with the feedback now? Looks like they have been listening and are releasing upgrades to help!

now what about that ipod? LOL

[BONKERZ]

i have been having issues with this for the past 2 weeks. It has stopped capturing....I set it to 30 captures before an email is sent and i went on to check the other day and it says there are over 200 captures but i have had no emails! Also the captures are of silly things like DS will put in text speak and it flags it up as rude word etc when it isnt at all....ie....CU SOON....flags up as rude word! LOL

[gill89]

i contacted CS over this issue and got the following reply---

"Sorry for the inconvenience caused to you. we are having big speed issues with the CS server at the moment that is causing php scripts to run very slowly, so the account check sometimes timeout and fails. This issue will take more 2 to 3 days as we had already escalated this issue to the development team and they are working on it. I will update you as soon as we overcome the problem."

[Soop]

I'm finding it terribly slow to log in to the console and then slow to bring up each capture, just like others on here. Last night I had to give up, which meant I couldn't react particularly quickly to what my daughter had been doing.

Also, I too got mismatched numbers of alerts and captures - 10 alerts but only 6 captures, so what were the other alerts for?

I also find that it captures parts of words as my daughter types emails, so I get alerts that really are totally irrelevent. And in other cases I can't see the supposed problem word on the screen capture image anywhere.

Getting less enthusiastic about this product and will need to see some improvements in speed and usability before I consider parting with any cash.

[gill89]

how are you all getting on?

mine is incredibly SLOW

[gill89]

and very starngely cybersentinel sometimes appears i my history and sometimes it doesn't!

[gill89]

lottiegirl, mine does not work sometimes either.

for example today my DB has been here alone and the normal history shows that he vsited porn sites 73 times, or 73 different pages, but cybersentinel is only showing 22 captures, and the web log tells me that he has not been any of the sites listed in the history. it does howver say that in the last 24hours he has been on google for 5505 minutes!!!

i am changing my mind ... it isn't worth £25.

plus mine is soooooo slow' it isn't my pC as all other sites are running fine.

when are cybersentinel going to come back with some feedback for us?

[sundew]

1. How easy was it to install? Very, quite, not very, not at all easy - if not easy, please say what happened
   
   It was very easy to install
   
   
2. Once installed, was it simple to use or complicated?
   I didn't find it very intuative - but that is maybe just me.
   
   
3. Did you use the web console to see a summary of your children?s web activity? If so, how do you find this?
   
   Yes, but dd1 is only 8 and we already have some controls on the PC so there are no suprises
   
   
4. Did you customise the word library to monitor for the use of your own words (such as your child?s mobile phone number or school name)? Was this easy?
   No, not yet.
   
   
5. Did you learn anything new about what your children do online? If so, what (say in general terms)
   No, plenty of Hello Kitty and not much else!
   
   
6. Do you think CyberSentinel helped you keep your children safe online? What was the best aspect of this?
   Its good to be able to block sites and have a list of whats been used
   
   
7. You currently have a free licence to use this product for one year - once that year is up do you think you would purchase this product? The cost is £25
   Probably not - but will reasses as dd1 gets older
   
8. Any other comments/ questions.....
   I agree with everyone about the annoying pop-up

[lottiegirl]

further to my first post,
3)Today I recieved 7 email notifications of captures This was from my son who was left at home whilst i was at work..I was disaapointed to find that although I could access the console from work it then showed no capture details despite the emails set to notify after 1 capture and 7 notification emails. I thought this might be a problem accessing remotely.

I then waited until I got home to reaccess the console. It still shows no capture details and has not highlighted web site details for the times the notification from the captures emails occured.He openly says he was on the computer.

This is the second time I have accessed the console to find no details of web sites visited when I know that my sons are online.
Now I am wondering is this a fault or can my children work out how to erase details? I have run reports and nothing shows. So why the capture emails?

[spudmasher]

Must apologise- never used it. DD dropped laptop down the stairs..........

[gill89]

is anyone else finding this site extremely slow atm?

has been getting worse over the last couple of days.

to check each capture is taking for than a minute.
there are 57 captures---i don't have an hour to spare.

[VelvetGlove]

1. How easy was it to install? Very, quite, not very, not at all easy - if not easy, please say what happened
   
   My other half did the installation for me, he used Windows 7 RC1 and everything seemed to work okay. The installation suggests to disable any firewall or anti-spyware applications currently running on the machine. This might be a bit too technical for some people, and could cause problems.
   
   
2. Once installed, was it simple to use or complicated?
   
   If you read the instructions it is simple to setup, site was clear and made nice use of new web technology like AJAX to ensure an ?Application like? feel, however, the site itself was very slow which made it considerably harder to set it all up. It might benefit from possibly a standard form which parents could use to tweak the word library. Not every parent would know which information could possibly be ?dangerous?. At least with a form parents could be made more aware and decide based on that if they feel filling in this information is actually needed.
   
   
3. Did you use the web console to see a summary of your children?s web activity? If so, how do you find this?
   
   It showed the web activity and although it showed a lot of detail in certain areas it lacked information in others. Why it doesn?t filter certain underlying sites like google analytics or doubleclick which although are part of the website that is being visited only make the list bigger and harder to audit for parents is beyond me. Also it doesn?t seem to go very much into detail about which parts of the site are actually visited.
   
   
4. Did you customise the word library to monitor for the use of your own words (such as your child?s mobile phone number or school name)? Was this easy?
   
   Adding words is relatively easy, although as mentioned earlier it would benefit from a standard form which contains a list of words and phrases which would be beneficial to be on the list.
   
   
5. Did you learn anything new about what your children do online? If so, what (say in general terms)
   
   As we keep the computers in the living room we generally have a good idea of what is going on at all times. Most interesting though was the time spent on the websites and the sheer number of visits certain sites get.
   
   
6. Do you think CyberSentinel helped you keep your children safe online? What was the best aspect of this?
   
   I think it could possibly work as a support tool. In combination with decent virusscanners / anti-spyware / firewalls on the one side and parental guidance and physical monitoring on the other it could be a good ?tool? in the overall toolkit which parents should use to keep their children safe on the internet.
   
   
7. You currently have a free licence to use this product for one year - once that year is up do you think you would purchase this product? The cost is £25
   
   As my other half is well versed in IT and all the internet traffic the kids pc?s generate goes through a transparent proxy which already filters it using a combination of blacklists both on domain & ip bases and content bases (word filtering) in combination with a strict firewall that blocks unwanted applications / traffic I don?t think this piece of software adds a lot of our current setup.
   
   
8. Any other comments/ questions.....
   
   Although kids might not be able to do it so easily my other half found it very easy to circumvent the security measures put in place by this application. I fully understand that not everyone will have the knowledge to do so but once information like this becomes available online kids could potentially perform these steps relatively easily. Most of these things can be avoided by limiting the user permissions for the kids user - not many people actually know how to do this and the default users on the Windows operating system come with administrator ?like? rights.
   
   When booting, the application does take a little while to become active, which means that if you are quick you can get about 20 ? 30 seconds of unmonitored internet time in before the ?popup?.
   
   The time based internet restrictions are the easiest to circumvent as by simply changing the system time (the clock on the computer) to an ?unrestricted? timeslot the restriction gets lifted. Since the application talks to the server on a regular basis, it should be relatively easily to base the applications internal clock on the server rather than the system clock of the PC. If the parent specifies beforehand the time zone in which the client PC is operating, the time based restrictions couldn?t be thwarted - not even by changing the computers date / time zone locally, after the system has connected to the server for the first time, (which it does at login to retrieve any updates to its profile anyway).
   
   The application itself is also very easy to ?switch? off. As although the processes which run the application will not let themselves be ?killed? simply disabling the service and the startup application using ?msconfig? and rebooting the machine will stop it from booting up the next time it logs in. Using a standard feature of msconfig the machine would automatically undo the change next time the machine starts up, meaning the machine could be used ?unmonitored? without the monitoring tools ever noticing.
   
   Another option would be to simply block the domain / ip address of the server the application tries to connect with in the firewall. This can be easily retrieved by looking into the processes used by the application in Process Explorer. This would of course only be a temporary solution as eventually someone would notice that the machine isn?t reporting any information. If the logging indeed works as advertised it would at that point be able to report on what has been going on.
   
   The blocking of chat didn?t seem to work in all cases. IRC chat for example using standalone clients like mIRC or embedded java applications in websites do not seem to be deterred at all.
   
   One major problem we found with the application itself was that when you want to install for example flash player or any other application which requires applications like browsers / explorer.exe etc to be closed (most Adobe software for example) the computer recognizes the CS executable as CompuServe which stops the applications from installing until this process is shutdown which is very inconvenient considering it cannot be closed in the normal way.
   
   Last but not least the popup screen itself. Although there might be a very good legal reason for it to be there, I don?t see the point of it. I do not want my kids to know we are monitoring what they are doing as knowing you are being monitored stimulates forced ?proper? behavior. This might all sound really good but what if they are not using their own computer? I see a much greater value in a monitoring tool that aids me to educate my children so they behave correctly wherever they use the internet. For that to be effective they shouldn?t be reminded every time they login that their parents are watching them.

[speck2903]

Has anyone else found it has slowed their computer down?

[BONKERZ]

I am loveing this product right now! Have realised i can use it for my DH's laptop too and have set his internet to go off at half ten!!!!!! fantastic we both actually sat and talked last night for first time in ages! I reckon this product could help save our marriage!!!

[tatt]

Can I have a chance to win if I say why I'm using a competitors product?

1. First month is free, so time to investigate and see if I need it. Still free after that if I don't mind an icon being visible (which I don't want). It offers a six month option for 20 pounds and lifetime for 80 pounds which allow extra options. That covers more than one computer.

1. Has the backing of an American government security agency so I feel that the information is in safe hands. Quite concerned about using any other company given the sensitive nature of the information they may hold.

1. Option to have different levels of monitoring for different log in details.

1. I have learnt a great deal and now feel a bit happier they are using the net safely. I can try to use the alert system to notify any suggestion that they might meet up with anyone dodgy.

1. Alert systems don't work well for teenagers as they are adept at using abbreviations or slang to get around them. The package I am using records activity for 90 days (if you pay) so I can let them go unmonitored and only check up if there is something that is worrying about their behaviour - or if they disappeared to meet a dodgy person!

[ali991]

1. How easy was it to install? Very, quite, not very, not at all easy - if not easy, please say what happened
   
   It was very easy to install
   
   
2. Once installed, was it simple to use or complicated?
   It was easy to use but the flash screen that came up on start up was very annoying and it took a little while to find where to disable this.
   
   
3. Did you use the web console to see a summary of your children?s web activity? If so, how do you find this?
   
   Yes, it was good to see what he had been using
   
   
4. Did you customise the word library to monitor for the use of your own words (such as your child?s mobile phone number or school name)? Was this easy?
   No, not got round to this yet. My son has not got a mobile or email yet, hes too young
   
   
5. Did you learn anything new about what your children do online? If so, what (say in general terms)
   No, I was generally aware of the websites he uses
   
6. Do you think CyberSentinel helped you keep your children safe online? What was the best aspect of this?
   Its good to be able to block sites and have a list of whats been used
   
7. You currently have a free licence to use this product for one year - once that year is up do you think you would purchase this product? The cost is £25
   Not sure yet
   
8. Any other comments/ questions.....
   The full pop up screen was very annoying

[Kiki21]

Hi,

1. How easy was it to install? Very, quite, not very, not at all easy - if not easy, please say what happened
   Very straightforward - no problem at all.
   
   
2. Once installed, was it simple to use or complicated?
   It took a bit of figuring out - not as intuitive as I expected (I never feel I have the time to read a manual).
   
   
3. Did you use the web console to see a summary of your children?s web activity? If so, how do you find this?
   Yes I did - I first created a separate user account on my Windows laptop for him. I couldn't make sense of how else to do it (within Cybersentinel).
   
   
4. Did you customise the word library to monitor for the use of your own words (such as your child?s mobile phone number or school name)? Was this easy?
   That's a great idea! Didn't think of it, to be honest.
   
   
5. Did you learn anything new about what your children do online? If so, what (say in general terms)
   Not really - nothing juicy, at least!
   
   
6. Do you think CyberSentinel helped you keep your children safe online? What was the best aspect of this?
   I think that, given more time to fiddle with the settings, it could be more useful. Certainly has potential.
   I like the feature allowing you to restrict websites and internet times - although it's not necessary for me to go that far yet.
   
   
7. You currently have a free licence to use this product for one year - once that year is up do you think you would purchase this product? The cost is £25
   I'd feel better about it if my concerns below could be addressed. Given more time to get used to the software and customise it to suit my family, I might find myself starting to rely on it more and more!
   
   
8. Any other comments/ questions.....
   There are a few niggles ...
   
   

1. Biggest gripe: It isn't able to screen YouTube content. It does pick up banned words in the text surrounding a particular video, but can't pick up any swear words or inappropriate content in the videos itself (not ever sure this is technically possible). For my child, YouTube is the biggest problem at the moment, as searches for seemingly innocuous words can often come back with quite hair-raising content. What is good, though, as that with this software I can restrict access to YouTube to times when I'm at home, or ban it outright.

1. For some reason I couldn't get into Gmail's photo section (for web albums you can upload from Picasa) while working in my child's account on my laptop. This was very frustrating as I wanted to download our dog's pictures from my web album to my child's account. I suspect it may have something to do with pop-ups (it happened when clicking on the 'Photos' link at the top of Gmail).

1. The word list needs to be fully customisable. By this I mean that I want to be able to go through the built-in word lists and add or remove words by ticking appropriate boxes. It is possible to add or remove words, but you never get to see what words are already in the list. This is a pain, as the software then screen captures content that you feel is actually okay for your child. It's a big waste of time to then have to look at all these screen captures to find out what the fuss is about! It may be a good idea to have word lists for different age groups.

1. More on word lists: the software makers could do better to take a leaf from Google's book and do context checking on words. Have just looked at the latest group of screen captures, and pages from a model train website were among them. The word caught was 'naked'. But the context was "... with water being heated by a naked flame, not by electricity ..." Makes me wonder how well the software is making use of context-sensitive searching ... Overall, I think this feature is far too sensitive, giving so many false positives I am tempted to just give up looking at the screen captures.

PS: I was shocked to find a bunch of screen captures of Facebook pages (of complete stranges!) taken on Saturday night - until I remembered that was the night we had our babysitter!