Hi,
Let me clarify a few things here about Norton Safety Minder and how it works.
In an effort to ensure that the parents were notified when the Safety Minder was disabled, we enabled the ability for parents to be notified by email when it happens.
The problem that is presenting itself here, is that the program does not distinguish between when the Safety Minder is disabled and when it crashes.
What most of you are seeing is the result of an unexpected crash by the client. This can be caused by a variety of issues, including 3rd party software, malformed websites, and other unexpected conditions.
The good news is that Norton Safety Minder was designed with a layered architecture such that if the program crashes, it's designed to restart itself.
The bad news is that when it restarts, it recognizes that it was shut off and sends a notification to the server.
ZX81's observation of two tray icons is an indicator that the program crashed and successfully restarted itself. If you were to click on one of those two icons, it would disappear because it is no longer functional.
Mijacar's point that it may be related to older or slower machines is not accurate. Norton Safety minder places a very low load on system resources as it's working, this goal was a principle design element. I do recommend, however, to make sure that older machines are completely updated, and have the most recent browser upgrades available.
Tazman's issue with disabling the safety minder without an internet connection is discussed in depth in this thread, and a fix for that issue will be in the next release of Norton Safety Minder, which you can expect soon.
Currently, there's not enough evidence to suggest that the type of internet connection (wired or wireless) has anything to do with Norton Safety Minder. Most of it's operations take place above that network layer.
A more plausible indicator would be the browser type or OS type, in connection with a 3rd party piece of software, or website, which is proving to be difficult for the Safety Minder to handle.
A variety of crashes have been fixed, so hopefully you can expect a better performing program to be released in the near future. Any additional information about what the children were doing, or what types of behaviors that may be unique to those machines which are experiencing crashes would be helpful.
so to sum up:
1 - Norton Safety Minder does not distinguish between a crash and when it is disabled (we will take a look at perhaps trying to differentiate).
2 - When the safety minder crashes, it will restart itself, so in the case where there was no tampering, protection can be restored to the
child's machine.
3 - Norton Safety Minder is small and lightweight, and is compatible
with older machines. It's designed to be a low load on system
resources.
4 - The bug of disabling the client without an internet connection has been identified and is fixed in the latest version to be released very soon.
Thanks all for your input.