Solidoak CYBERsitter 9.0 review

CYBERsitter looks very old-fashioned. However, it passed all our porn, extremism, gambling and random violence tests without difficulty.

Extra features allow you to block access to the Control Panel, Task Manager and other system components. Normally you'd have to use Active Directory to get this level of control, so we were impressed. And even when it did allow users access to these features, they couldn't use them to shut CYBERsitter down; it restarted every time we tried. When you install it, however, look at the list of available filters straight away and decide which you want to apply. Although the list of things you can block is very long, few of the filters are active by default.

Like CyberPatrol, it blocked inappropriate chats by refusing to accept further communication from the offending party. This lasted for a single chat session. The next time we tried to contact an instant messaging account associated with abusive behaviour, we were able to do so.

Some other features didn't work particularly well. The program has System Snooper, which searches through internet traces looking for evidence of misuse; the first time we ran it, the feature missed traces of adult sites but incorrectly (we assume) identified some of the cookies from its own site as suspect. We were also frustrated to discover that, although you can configure the program to email you updates of what users are up to, there's no option to enable SSL for your mail server. Almost all mail servers these days use some form of encryption.

This is generally a good program, but a few glitches need to be sorted out before we can wholeheartedly recommend it.

Author: Karl Wright