Do you know how safe you and your family are online? BritMums blogger Kara Guppy was tasked with giving F-Secure a go, in a paid project. Hear below what she thought …
In a world where we spend an increasing amount of time online, connecting to our loved ones, doing our banking and shopping and even asking search engines questions we wouldn’t ask anyone else, do you worry how secure your personal data is.
It’s important to keep all our devices protected and our information private as there are all sorts of threats out there that even the most internet savvy person can get caught out by. Just last week my husband got caught out by a phishing email supposedly from Apple. Thankfully he realised just in time that something was amiss but it caused days of pain trying to reinstate his Apple account which was shut down almost immediately.
We were asked to try F-Secure SAFE, which protects our online security and allows us to set parental controls on up to 5 different devices.
Setting up parental controls has historically been a bit of a nightmare, but F-Secure couldn’t be more simple.
Simply register your account and then download the F-Secure app onto each device you want to protect.
Each device can have different security settings, which you set from the app on the device, that way the teen has more access than the younger kids to enable him to research homework etc.
The settings include:
- Time Limits – set daily time limits for internet browsing
- Content Blocking – a handy checklist of types of content to block
- Finder – Locate your device if it gets lost and play an alarm on it to help you find it (perfect for me as I am forever misplacing my phone). You can even share your location via SMS or email incase you are lost or in trouble.
- My Location – perfect for when your child misplaces their device
- Statistics – Shows a graph of time online and the number of websites checked and blocked
I strongly recommend you password protect the app to stop little geniuses changing the settings!
I am really impressed with F-Secure so far as it has already helped locate a missing iPad and I am more confident to let the kids use their tablets to surf the internet without looking over their shoulder. I am not sure they are too impressed with the time limits, but it does mean we can be more strict as the gone are the days of “Just 5 more minutes Mummy”.
F-Secure SAFE doesn’t cost the earth either and costs from £39.99 for a one year subscription for up to 2 devices, increasing in price for the more devices you want to add.
About Kara Guppy
Kara is a busy mother of 6 children aged between 2 and 22 and lives in Dorset. The family love to be outside and live by the motto “Collect Moments, Not Things”. We can often be found leaping in muddy puddles, climbing trees, collecting seashells or hurling ourselves off cliffs down ziplines, and all for fun of course.
Kara loves to blog about her and the family’s adventures and can be found at Chelseamamma.co.uk, arewenearlythereyet.eu and sharing videos of her days out on her YouTube channel. She can also be found on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, G+, Vine and Pinterest.
I do think time limits are important for screen time. I don’t allow mine to have screens between 10am and 5pm and not for an hour before bedtime and thankfully they all stick to the rule.
My Husband has managed to stop two phishing emails twice from work recently where they were trying to get him to transfer huge amounts of money. Thankfully he spotted each time that there was one letter wrong in the email address they had sent from but had made it look like it was from his boss. It’s scary the lengths these fraudsters will go to. Online safety is so important in protecting the family as a whole.
This looks like such a great app which can be adjusted for different children’s ages within the family
Kara, an interesting post. I should show this to my sister in law – she paranoid about security. xx
I think I need limits for myself. As soon as I start on Football Manager, I lose days!
I think I need limits for myself lol! I’m not at a stage yet where I need to set limits. My eldest daughter uses hers but not a lot. I’ll let my cousin know about this though as her son spends all day on it
Getting them to turn them off has always been the challenge in this house. When a app or device does it for them it definitely takes the argument out of it