SentryPC

The Internet may offer some interesting information, but it also offers contents which are not suitable for children. Because you can not stay home all day, keeping an eye on your children and what they do on your computer, a monitoring software is just the tool you need. What makes SentryPC unique is the fact that it monitors the activity on a PC, but the logs it creates are not as detailed as those created by keyloggers. Its main purpose is to prevent certain keystrokes, websites and block certain applications which should not be accessed by children.

SentryPC can be downloaded and installed fast and easy, just like other lightweight software on the market. You will not encounter any issues regarding compatibility or system requirements, but you may be slowed down a bit if you have an anti-virus program installed. Because SentryPC will monitor keystrokes and other activities, there is a good chance that an anti-virus will see it as a keylogger and it will block it, so you should add it to an exceptions list.

Being a monitoring program, SentryPC will obviously run in the background and you can set a master password to prevent anyone from accessing it and changing your rules. You will find a series of icons on a compact interface and clicking them will display different settings on separate windows. Locking or unlocking the computer, granting temporary full access to a user and other security related actions can be performed from a pop up menu, after clicking the Admin Commands icon.

A larger interface, called the Admin Panel, can be brought up by clicking the icon with the same name. This interface will display a larger number of icons, but most of them will open the same options window. From this window, you can set up filters for web sites, applications, chat programs and more. If a user attempts to access a web site or an application you have added to a filter, the program will close it immediately. The same can be done with keystrokes. You can add certain keywords to a list, and if the user types one of those words, the application he is typing in will be closed automatically. All these filters can be set on the same window, under different navigation tabs.

It is also possible to set daily or weekly time limits. If someone is allowed to use your computer only a few hours per day, SentryPC will enforce this with its time management feature. Other restrictions may be set in order to prevent a user from "cheating." You may disable the start menu buttons, the clock, taskbar, the Windows control panel or Task Manager and others. You may also access different activity reports, but, as previously mentioned, they are not as detailed as those created by standard keyloggers, so a user's privacy will not be invaded.