My Children can easily disable Online Family Safety minder

My children have their own accounts and are able to disable and even unistall the norton online safety. They do not know the password.

Here's how they do it:

1. While in a monitored account, disconnect from the internet (I did it by flicking the switch on the laptop that shuts off the wireless signal and I also did it through the "connect to" menu item).

2. Click NSM (dog's paw).

3. Click disable NSM

4. When asked for the "parent email" and "parent password" type anything (but you must put something in both fields)

5. Click OK

6. You will get a message

7. Ignore it and click OK

8. NSM is now disabled. reconnect to the internet and there will be no monitoring of activity.



This is a serious problem that must be resolved: I need your help.

Typhlosion,

 

In the point #6 of below post, message clearly says:

"The Norton Safety Minder is not sure about your account information. If you continue, a note will be sent to your parent letting them know you are disabling Norton Safety Minder. Do you want to continue?" 

 

YES/NO options are shown to the kid to choose. On Clicking 'YES' , Norton Safety Minder sends a notification email to the parent when internet connection is set back.

 

Norton Safety Minder is designed to monitor the kid activities while enhancing the parents - kids communication. When any notifications are received, parents can have a chat with the kids to understand the need for disabling Norton Safety Minder.  So that parents and kids can maintain a good relationship.

 

Thanks,

Ashok

My children have found that if they continually refresh a desired page it will eventually load, and the icon for nsm will disappear from the task bar temporarily ( it returns after about 3 or 4 minutes). In that time they may surf without limits. This has occurred repeatedly on two different computers. HELP!!!

Can we get some clarification here?

 

sojourner42c, are you children doing what was described earlier in this thread, or are they just refreshing the page over and over? 

 

in regards to Typhlosion's initial posting... when the network connection is restored, Norton Safety Minder detects the network connection and it will re-establish network monitioring. If the children have time limits, it can take up to 5-7 minutes for norton safety minder to synchronise with our servers and establish that time limits may have been reached. 

 

Andrew D.

 

That is no solution. Yes, I'm informed. By the same technique they can completely unistall the programme. This has no utility, other than I know my kids are roaming freely as if I did not have Safety Minder.

 

Is there a proper solution that prevents them from disabling Safety Minder?

The kids just continue to renew pages sometimes it will eventually load. They also sometimes repeat this  same method and close then reopen explorer and a page will load and for a few seconds, then they can surf where they want and pages will stay active as long as it is left open,totally defeating the program.

If you children are using limited windows accounts instead of administrator accounts, They shouldn't be able to uninstall products. Are your children's windows accounts limited user accounts?

 

Uninstall notification events are sent to the activity page, and any uninstall event should be treated as a violation of the house rules, which should prompt parents to respond accordingly.

 

 

sojourner42c

 

1) Can you post a link to a page that they have been successfully able to access by reloding the page multiple times?

2) Can you confirm what category is blocking that site?

3) What is the version of the browser that you are using?

 

Thanks,

 

 

The have shown me how they are able to get on runescape.com ( which is a blocked site in their settings). They are using internet explorer 9. I sometimes receive emails stating NSM has been disabled. It seems that NSM is temporarily disabled and then restarts during the method they are using to get around it. Meanwhile the browser window that is opened in which they have evaded NSM is free to surf and play, and if closed NSM is working again until they employ their tricks again.

There are a couple of problems here. First, the NSM client seems like it can be defeated with some fairly simple steps, and now that they're published on this forum you can bet that 9 out of 10 kids will find them. As I understand it the procedure is to flood the client--essentially generate a denial of service attack against it, so to speak. Symantec needs to make the client more robust and able to withstand this sort of behavior.

 

The second issue appears to be that the kids in question have administrative rights on the computers they use. I don't know why that is, maybe it's because doing so was easier, maybe they need them to run business critical applications like Call of Duty: Black Ops, or maybe the permissions were enabled just to set up the kid's desktop profiles and never removed. In any case, the reality is that if you have administrative rights to a Windows desktop, there is very little in the way of restrictions that can be put in place for your account. I would seriously consider whether the kids need administrative rights on the machines they use, and if not (hopefully not) then remove them. That will prevent them from removing software and from doing a host of other troublesome things.

 

One other consideration that transcends NSM entirely but applies to blocking content, since that appears to be the main theme in this thread. NSM is only capable of blocking content on a PC or Mac. Some kids will simply pick up their iPad, or use their Internet-enabled TV, or any of a dozen other methods to get online, none of which are monitored by NSM. If you're going to block that content as well, then you need something beyond a client-based solution. One straightforward way to do this is to block at the gateway, i.e., your home connection to the Internet. I use a service called OpenDNS and it is fabulous.

 

Perhaps Symantec could implement something similar to OpenDNS that integrates with the NSM client, maybe hosting their own upstream DNS servers that allow content filtering but report the results back to NSM. Now that would be an interesting client application.

sojourner42c

 

We are investigating this problem right now with IE9.  would you be willing to add the site in question (runescape.com) to the child's list of blocked sites, and see if you are still encountering this problem?

 

Thanks,

 

 

 

What operating system are you using?    If you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7, are the kids accts setup as "users" & not "administrators"?

 

If you are using Windows XP, I know that accts usually have to be administrators just to do simple tasks, but there are ways of "disabling" certain features under that acct (i.e. removing certain features from control panel)

My children are not on admin accounts and are subject to parental controls , and the runescape.com site is also on the list of blocked sites in NSM and has been since I installed NSM. It appeears they are able to overload NSM's ability to block it.

Hi,

   I am also using NSM and it works like a champ. You know, inorder to filert out some websites , you can also try blocking the websites on your router . Login in to the router interface using somthing like .. 192.168.0.1 on your web browser . Then enter the username and password .. mostly it would be username : admin     &   password : password     itself .... login to the interface with these credentials . Then you can filter out the webseraches and websites using keyword flter or something like that. This is the most effective method to block websites ... Add keywords  like porn .. etc.. if you want to block porn ... but you know, if you do so .. along with the kid , you too will not be able to use it.. or .. to use it you can add your ip address in the safelist ... or as one of the pals mentioned earlier .. please use open DNS in your router .. if you have a static IP it will be wonderful ... if you have a Dynamic IP it will be hard to block even using open DNS .. in that case they offer premium options where you can get something whcih is worth the money you pay for.. Go for it....

 

Best Wishes,

 

Sudheesh.KS.

 

Logic matters not the route...

Attention Symantec Employees-and to AshokV

 

1. My next response is to elevate this weakness to more senior management. I have copied the responses into a  word document.

2. If this significant problem is not resolved, then I will not renew my subscription.

3. The previous parental control was much more effective.

4. AskokV your response is not true.

 

The online family makes claims such as (from your website)

Web Monitoring & BlockingTracks what web sites your kids visit
An easy-to-read activity report shows you at a glance ALL the web sites your kids visit, or attempt to visit. You can visit the sites your kids have been to and block specific sites or types of sites.
Time LimitsMakes managing your kids’ computer time a breeze
You can set limits on your kids’ computer time to help ensure they aren’t spending too much time online and to teach them good computer time management habits. You can even limit computer use to the specific hours or days of the week.



5. Since online family can be so easily disabled, it can offer no protection, no monitoring, and kids can roam freely and not be restricted.

 

 

 

Look at post 1 MD. Do you consider this a denial of service attack? You jest right?

You sould like Symantec employee. It does not work like a champ.

 

Your solution is useless. We are talking about the software.

Typhlosion,

 

Norton Online Family is intended to help a parent with your children's online world. There is no way to 100% protect software from someone who has physical access to a machine. There are many different ways to defeat all parental control software when you have that access. Our solution was to notify the parents that the product was disabled, which you obliviously got, so the product is doing what it's supposed to do and also notifying you of when someone tampers with it.

 

Specific responses to your questions / statements:

 

1) OK, however this "weakness" exists in all parental control products

2) sorry to hear this as I believe this product does what it's supposed to do and advertised to do

3) the previous parental control only looked at URLS and did not have the extensive set of features now offered, also that could be defeated very easily as well

4) I can confirm as the Director of Engineering responsible for Norton Online Family that Ashok's response is in fact correct, in fact he is one of our stellar developers working on the product, what exactly in his post do you believe is not true?

5) if your child is disabling Norton Online Family and you are informed about it, then that is your opportunity to have a discussion with your kids, just as if in the real world when your child does something wrong, you inform them that there are consequences or punishments for that behavior and hope they will no longer exhibit that action

 

Regards,

 

Matt Boucher
Director of Engineering - Norton Online Family
Consumer Products and Solutions
Symantec Corporation
www.symantec.com
-----------------------------------------------------
Office: 781-530-2368
Mobile: 603-566-5848
Email: matt_boucher@symantec.com

Hi Matt,

 

thanks for looking at this - in my case I am pretty certain my 10 year old is not actively disabling but it is doing so automaticaly for some reason. How do we fix this?

 

Best,

Ian

 

Can you give us more information?

 

I think you are having an issue with the browser plugin being disabled.

 

Can you tell use the OS and browser type and versions?