MinorMonitor Review - Review 2022

The primeval parental control tools served the very specific purpose of keeping kids from accidentally (or deliberately) surfing to inappropriate websites. These days, for many kids surfing the Web just isn't a thing. Instead, they spend their time on social media. The free MinorMonitor service aims to help parents keep track of that social media activity. It does a decent job, equally long as your child cooperates, but the company's acquisition a few years agone has left it somewhat lacking when information technology comes to support.

Getting started with MinorMonitor is a snap. To start, y'all visit the MinorMonitor website and create an account. Adjacent, you connect that business relationship to your child'southward Facebook or Twitter account by logging in with the child's credentials. Don't accept that username and countersign? You'll need to sit down with the kid and explain why y'all need information technology. Inside a few minutes, MinorMonitor completes its analysis of the final 180 days of action on the business relationship and displays a summary. Simple!

Platform Independence
Information technology's worth noting that MinorMonitor is strictly Spider web-based. Y'all log into it from any browser, on any platform. And information technology likewise tracks the kid'south social media activity on whatsoever device. On the negative side, a child who resents your monitoring can simply turn off MinorMonitor in Facebook or Twitter and choose a new password, thereby locking you out. If this happens, you'll definitely know you and your kid are having problems, but you lot won't have the clues you need to investigate.

Qustodio Parental Control 2022($39.95 at Qustodio) and uKnowKids besides require installation of an app for monitoring. Your kids won't escape Qustodio past disabling its app—if the app isn't active, it blocks all access to Facebook. Qustodio, a full-featured multi-device parental command system, costs $44.95 per twelvemonth to manage upward to five kids on up to 5 devices.

Net Nanny Social(19.99 Per Yr at Net Nanny) tracks and aggregates activity on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a number of other social media sites. You tin install its app, if you know the kid's credentials, or send an email request the child to install it. If y'all're Facebook friends with your kid, y'all can optionally monitor the kid'south activeness via your ain account.

ContentWatch Net Nanny 7($39.99 at Internet Nanny) doesn't include serious social media tracking itself. All the same, if you opt for the x-child Family Protection Pass, which costs $79.99 per year, y'all get Net Nanny Social as a bonus.

As for Symantec Norton Family Premier($49.99 Per Year at NortonLifeLock), it doesn't demand an app, because it doesn't integrate with Facebook at all. Instead, it simply watches activity in the browser. As a outcome, information technology can lose tracking power entirely after a Facebook update, regaining it simply when Symantec's engineers catch up with their own update.

Online Overview
MinorMonitor'south action overview packs a lot of information into ane screen. You get a chart of recent alert categories, showing how many posts were flagged for profanity, sexual content, and and then on. The most recent photos show up hither, forth with any associated comments. A pie chart breaks down activeness into five categories: Posts, Comments, Messages, Photos, and Other. A bar chart indicates the times of day that your child most often uses social media, broken downward into the same v activeness types. Finally, at that place's a uncomplicated reflection of the sentiment (positive or negative) reflected by your child'due south social media activity. Internet Nanny Social tracks sentiment in a similar mode.

MinorMonitor Overview

For testing purposes, I pointed the product at my ain Facebook account. I wasn't at all surprised to run into a spike in activity in the very late afternoon, every bit I quite frequently check in to Facebook correct after finishing work. In a real-world state of affairs, a fasten in social media in the wee hours of the morning might propose you should accept a talk with the child. Y'all'll detect a similar time-of-twenty-four hours chart in uKnowKids.

My sentiment rated mostly positive, once again not surprising (to me, at to the lowest degree). I did observe that fifty-fifty though I send a fair number of Facebook messages, the pie chart showed no messages at all. I'grand guessing that's due to Facebook splitting off Messenger into a separate app.

I don't think I made any posts bullying other users, simply the warning chart flagged five posts with that category. Which ones? I clicked the bar for the Bullying category, just all I got was a listing of all available alerts, with no choice to filter by category.

Detail Pages
The Alerts page lets you view all alerts for the last 7, thirty, or 180, sorted in ascending or descending date lodge. MinorMonitor scans your own posts and comments by your friends for words that enhance a cherry flag. For each item, it displays the full text along with the give-and-take or phrase that caused the alarm. If you lot see that there was no real reason for the warning, you tin dismiss it.

On the one hand, the scanner seems quite sensitive. The innocuous question "Was Dick Nixon'due south pussy cat named Chess?" raised alerts for Sexual Reference, Bullying, and Profanity. On the other hand, a frivolous poem containing words similar smoke, toke, hash, crash, Benzedrine, and mescaline about got past the filter; information technology only flagged "toke." And I have no idea why my reference to DFW (Dallas Fort Worth drome) suggests Possible Solicitation, as MinorMonitor doesn't explain its ratings.

MinorMonitor Alerts

When uKnowKids flags a discussion or phrase in a post, you can bespeak at the phrase to larn just why information technology was flagged. On the flip side, Net Nanny Social doesn't tell you anything about the reason for flagging a post.

When I reviewed this service five years ago, information technology also included a Friends tab, with the ability to flag social media friends who might not be advisable. Specifically, it pointed out friends with five or fewer other friends in common, and friends who consistently displayed negative sentiments. That feature is no longer present. On the plus side, the old MinorMonitor couldn't show y'all comments with full context, whereas the present-day version tin can.

If you're concerned that the scanner might have missed a subtle withal risky reference, you can click the Activity tab to become a look at all of your child's social media action, or click the Photos tab to specifically peruse photos and their associated posts. If you lot need still more detail, you tin click a link to view the postal service or response correct in your child'due south account. Retrieve, MinorMonitor has direct access to the account.

Unproblematic Settings
On the Settings page, you lot tin can double-check that MinorMonitor is correctly connected to your child's Facebook and Twitter accounts, and renew the connection if necessary. Y'all tin too choose whether you lot want to receive email notifications when an alert effect occurs. Net Nanny Social offers e-mail alerts and tin optionally alarm parents via text message.

MinorMonitor Settings

You tin also prepare the electronic mail notification system's sensitivity separately for each of the eight alert categories. By default, the system ignores what it calls Mild Profanity and uses normal sensitivity for the other seven. When I fix them all to high sensitivity, I immediately received an electronic mail notification about recent doubtable posts.

Sitting Hither in Limbo
Working through the product's features, I had a number of questions. Merely what do the different sensitivity levels for e-mail alerts do? Why does the word DFW suggest solicitation? If "darn" and "egad" don't constitute mild profanity, what words would qualify?

Alas, the aid arrangement for this service is not-functional. Clicking the help icon just displays an error message. Combing the MinorMonitor website, which has a copyright engagement of 2022, I found that there accept been no blog posts since 2022 and no press releases since 2022. The service itself works, merely its support system is in limbo.

SecurityWatch

With some effort, I got a confirmation from the company. Infoglide, publisher of MinorMonitor, was acquired back in 2022 by fraud-investigation firm FICO. The new owner continues to operate it, and plans "a maintenance update this spring that volition accost some of those bug."

Look for a Total-Featured Solution
MinorMonitor used to have more competitors in the social-media tracking arena, but quite a few accept fallen past the wayside. SafetyWeb got folded into Experian, and Check Indicate dropped ZoneAlarm SocialGuard quite a while agone. Avira purchased SocialShield simply subsequently dropped it.

Maybe in that location'south proficient reason. MinorMonitor's tracking of social media can be useful for parents, but there'due south more than to parental monitoring. If social media is a business organisation, you'll be better off choosing a parental command solution that tracks social media as function of a broad-spectrum monitoring system. Of our Editors' Selection products in this area—Symantec Norton Family unit Premier, Qustodio Parental Control, and ContentWatch Internet Nanny 7—Qustodio offers the strongest social media tracking. Net Nanny's Family unit Protection Pass gets full parental command for upwards to ten kids and includes Net Nanny Social. Either one would be a better option, though they cost quite a chip compared to the totally free MinorMonitor.