E-mail: Zoobah
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: child, security, safety | Themes: Software
11. E-mail: Zoobah
“Safe email for kids and families”
Cost: Free 30-day trial, $29.95 per year thereafter
Web-based email is a practical option for kids. It can be used at home, at school or even at a friend’s house. With all this freedom, however, comes a need for email monitoring that doesn’t interfere with the child’s experience. Zoobah attempts to do this for families on a limited budget, and offers pretty much all a parent would want in control and customization.
Setup of the Zoobah email account was easy. Simply register on the site for the 30-day free trial (which contains all the same permissions as a paid account) and activate via the parent’s email. Within minutes, parents can set up their child’s email account with permission lists that allow (or prohibit) individual contacts on your child’s email list. In addition, several other useful permissions make the account supervision as hands-on as parents choose.
Parents can choose, for example, to be copied on each incoming and outgoing message associated with their child’s email. For those who don’t want to deal with the hassle of receiving so many extra messages, they can also choose to utilize the Mail Queue, which lets parents direct all incoming mail into a folder only they can see. From here, parents can approve or deny messages on an individual basis, and each message will only be seen by the child once it’s approved. One noble addition to the Zoobah email messages is the auto-signature “this communication is sent by a child,” which offers a little extra protection when your child sends out emails. This is useful since children may not always be forthcoming about the fact that they are kids in their emails. Also, it is handy to have their status as a minor documented in the digital paper trail should a situation arise where an adult claims not to know he or she was communicating with a child.
The reporting function of Zoobah is especially handy, giving parents the details of their child’s time spent logged in. The total time and IP address of the log-on location is provided and parents can also choose to set time restrictions to keep kids out of email during time away from home or late at night.
Perhaps the most unique and useful function of the Zoobah email system is the ability for parents to strip emails of “junk” before their kids get it. While not ideal for every situation, parents can prohibit links, attachments, or photo/videos from being seen without damage to the message of the email. This could be the perfect defense against unwanted viruses or inappropriate content inadvertently being sent by a well-meaning friend.
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Nicely written-- I like seeing Tom's branch out into a variety of interest areas, even if they arent thrilling.
What i miss in this topic is, how does the Microsoft Parenting control stand out to these programs.
I hope the 12 year olds read this after they get back from school.
What i miss in this topic is, how does the Microsoft Parenting control stand out to these programs.
Thanks for the question mkrijt. Linsey Knerl offers these comments about Windows and other OS parent control tools: "While they had some good features, (like site blocking, permissions requests, time-limits, etc.) it was hard to integrate over several different computers. It also didn't lock down the browser so kids couldn't escape and mess up your desktop folders.
One major complaint to the operating-system based tools that Apple and Microsoft offer, is that they want to tie everything back into your Windows Live or Apple accounts. (So if my 3-year-old wants to have a special collection of websites that he can access on our computer, I'd have to set him up for a Windows account that the computer can access and associate with his preferences.) I'm not a huge fan of having to have my kids set up as "accounts", which is why I like the independently-developed tools. They usually just need me to assign a name and password for my kid, and it isn't stored in my PC.
Another disadvantage to the OS based options is that they aren't practical for multiple environments. Let's say little Johnny has security settings at home all set up, but then wants to go to Grandma's to play games. I'd have to go to Grandma's and find out how her operating system works, and if it isn't the same as what we have, I'd have to reset all the settings on her system. (A lot of work.) With independent browsers, we just download on Grandma's PC, and the web-based settings automatically take effect.
Basically, there's no easy way to use the OS based browsers between machines that are not using the same OS."
Wonderful article. very objective and informative. Thanks for writing it. Good articles like this give me hope for Toms... it's almost funny to me that before I knew who wrote this I assumed it wasn't Marcus Yam because it was actually helpful and intelligent. Linsey Knerl FTW
If children at the age of 3 know those words already then they need more help than what software can do.
But anyways it's not like young kids enjoy watching porn or anything like that. Most kids don't go on very many sites, and site blockers are probably the worst thing ever created. At school we can't even use google images on school projects.
Wouldn't OpenDNS be better for blocking sites? It does so at the "source" rather than having to install a program on everyone's machines. I block all DNS queries and then explicitly allow OpenDNS servers with filtering set to moderate. Works like a charm, no adult content for anyone using anything on my internet connection. And it's FREE for home users!!!
The internet is a place for adults. Do you leave your child in a room with an adult you do not know?
DON'T leave the child alone on the net.
Nice article, it would be a nice thing to do for every OS in the market to adopt the tendency of adding one of these browsers as option for the little ones.
Most parents are not really aware of what internet means, just because they don't care about the non-4child content, or because they doesn't realize about how dangerous for a growing mind that content could be.
Many of us surfers of the web we actually don't pay attention to the stupid propaganda, sex adds and all that crap, because most of us know that those links will probably end up in some weird site asking for personal data, etc.. etc.. etc.. KIDS CAN NOT TELL IF IT'S GOOD OR BAD! THEY JUST CLICK ON IT.