Norton Family

[PeterDP]

Hi,

I am getting regular email telling me that Safety Minder has been disabled.  I get the message only for my oldest child, who was the first to have real restrictions put on his account. 

There are a total of six accounts on our desktop, a Windows XP, SP2 running Norton Internet Security. Two belong to my wife and to me, the remaining four are for our four oldest children.  I have a fifth Safety Minder account for my youngest, but its not assigned to an XP account.

I thought that perhaps when my son played WOW on a private server, that it might have triggered disabling Safety Minder, but I've noticed that I get the email notification when he is not playing or has not played WOW and when he isn't even logged on.

I've seen other folks with this issue, but I haven't seen a resolution.  I am most curious as to whether or not Safety Minder is actually protecting his account, and then if it is possible to keep these messages from being generated.

Many thanks for your time and thoughts,

Peter

[KatieQ]

Hi Peter, Do you see the paw in the tray at the bottom right hand side of the screen on the pc when you receive the emails?  When you receive the emails, do you see any messages on the pc screen?  You said "getting regular email", how often do  you receive them? Thanks, Katie

[PeterDP]

Hi Katie,

I will check for the paw in the tray when future messages arrive; I haven't checked at the point when the message arrives in the past.  Sometimes the message has come when one of my other children is logged on, which quite surprised me.  I have logged on afterwards to verify that the application is still running, which it was.  It seemed as though Safety Minder had been running without pause.  Is there a message in a system log I can look for?

When he is logged on, I am getting the email two to three times a day.  I have received this message 15 times this week.

Thank you for your help and please let me know if there is more information I can provide.

Yours,

Peter

[KatieQ]

Hi Peter,

Do you have any other parental-control programs installed on the pc?

What kind of Anti-Virus or Security products are installed on the pc?

Thanks,

Katie

[PeterDP]

Hi Katie,

I use Norton Internet Security, version 16.5, for virus and firewall and internet security.  Secunia PSI monitors application version numbers. There are some other background processes for Carbonite, CD burners, Open Office and the like, but nothing else security or control related.  The XP desktop sits behind a LinkSys firewall.

The only other parental control are the passwords; the children do not know any of them, so they must be logged on by an adult. Only I have administrative priviledges on the machine. 

Yours,

Peter

[PeterDP]

Hi Katie,

I have an update.  My son is playing WOW, and I received the same notification via email that the Safety Minder tool has been disabled.  The paw icon is present and when I moused over it, the tool tip said that Safety Minder was active.  

So, it looks as though the application is running and believes itself to be functioning, but nonetheless triggers a message that the tool was disabled.

My concern is that some aspect of the tool may not be operating as expected, which might mean that my child will have access to sites I have prohibited or will not have his time constrained as I have configured.  Can you please help me explore this further?

Many thanks,

Peter

[KatieQ]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your additional information.  I checked with our development team and they think the product may have stopped, but restarted itself automatically.  Please answer the following questions. 

Do you get this notification every day? How about every time your child plays WOW? 

Does it happen each time the machine is rebooted? 

Does the paw go away when they are playing WOW?

Thanks,

Katie  

[Vallynn]

I would like to add that this is happening with my account as well.  Like Peter, it seems my daughter's Safety Minder account continues to run and gather information and function as expected despite the warning that it has been disabled.  I only have one user account (one child).  I get several of these warnings each time she uses her computer.  She does not ever play World of Warcraft.  She usually plays Sims or some fashion or doll games online.  I get the warning even if she doesn't use the internet - just playing installed games.

Whenever she gets a pop-up notification from Safety Minder, she clicks the "X" to close it rather than waiting for it to fade out on its own.  Could this trigger the disable notice?

Her PC specs:

Windows7 RC (problem existed with Vista before, also)

Kaspersky Internet Security (were using Norton360 with Vista before & had same problem; just sampling Kaspersky recently)

No other parental controls, except I run the whole home network through OpenDNS with more permissive internet filtering.

[pkidza]

Hi

I am having the same issue.  I have 2 computer with it loaded on.  The first is a desktop with Windows Vista 32 bit installed.  I have Norton 360 3 installed and Prevx.  The second is a Windows XP SP 3 netbook.  I carry on getting messages that it has been disabled on each machine.  The messages always popup slightly after I have booted up the machine.  I don't play WOW.  The paw is always in the notification area and I tested to see if it was working by trying to go to a porn site but it blocked it so it is working.

[pkidza]

The e-mails always seem to be sent just after I have booted up my machine.  Maybe something is initialising and it thinks that it has been disabled?  It always works and blocks porn etc in spite of the e-mails...