My 11 and 15 year old’s have figured out how to “turn Safety Minder off”. When they do this, I receive a notice about it being turned off, but I don’t know how to fix it so that they are not able to turn it off in the first place. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I talked to my kids about it and actually, it turns out that they haven’t been doing it. I watched one of my kids play and log off after, and when I checked my email it still had a “turned off” notice. I know they hadn’t turned it off because I was watching the whole time they were playing. I guess it is just a glitch in the system. It would be nice if it could get fixed though.
No activity on this thread for a while but it's the exact problem I have. Tamper Detection: Safety Minder Turned Off.
OK, my 14yo has not guessed my password and even if she had, why then would Safety Minder detect a tamper? That makes no sense.
My 14yo in a non adminitrator on the computer and does not have my pass word so... what now? And How can I check to see what happened to Safety Minder?
gdhugh,
Thanks for the information. We are working on this issue. If you or someone can reproduce the issue consistently, please let us know. We’ll appreciate it greatly.
To answer your question “even if she had, why then would Safety Minder detect a tamper?” If a child knows the parent email address and password, the kid can easily turn off Norton Safety Minder. To help the parents to monitor the child activities, the program sends an email to notify the parents.
Your question “How can I check to see what happened to Safety Minder?” Once you receive the email, please check if the Norton Safety Minder icon, a dog paw is still active in the System Tray (Not grayed out, or with red X on it). You can also go to Web activity page on the OnlineFamily.Norton to see if it still records web activities.
Thanks,
Katie
Well, it is definitely not them just turning it off.
It is now saying the same message; "The Safety Minder tool on Main Computer used by Ryan, has been disabled. As you know, Safety Minder is required on every computer monitored by OnlineFamily.Norton."
Ryan is my 5 year old. So, needless to say, the kids aren't the problem. There must just be something wrong with Safety Minder.
I just wanted to let you know that I can reproduce the situation consistently…well, at least the notifications about it being turned off come consistently. Pretty much every time my kids get on the computer, I get the “turned off” notification, and like I mentioned, it is now happening when my 5 year old gets on too, so it is not just the kids figuring out the password.
Hi There,
In your case, it definitely sounds like the Safety Minder is somehow being disabled, without a child turning it off.
Currently, we send the same message regardless of whether the Safety Minder has been turned off or disabled - that's a problem that we're going to be fixing in an upcoming release. I have asked the team to update the product so that we send one message if the Safety Minder has been turned off using an administrative password, and a different message if the Safety Minder has been disabled somehow.
Would you consider joining one of the technical staff from my team in a remote session so he can take a look at your computer?
Thanks, and apologies for the problems with the Safety Minder. I'm working on getting more information about these issues from users so that we can identify what's going on.
My daughter has been able to bypass the Safety Minder by doing something her friend told her to the computer (running xp) such that all icons look very big. When I restart the computer, everything is fine. It does not matter whether she tells us what she did, but I would like to take that ability away. It is possible that she restarted it in safe mode, but it is my guess. I know that she has been bypassing it all the time, but only occasionally do I get a Tamper message in Activity log. Apparently, what she did to bypass was not detected.
Thanks for your help.
Hong
Mom7 wrote:
My 11 and 15 year old's have figured out how to "turn Safety Minder off". When they do this, I receive a notice about it being turned off, but I don't know how to fix it so that they are not able to turn it off in the first place. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I don't know why Symantec is not being straight with you.
If you read this link you will see that Symantec knows exactly what is happening and that it is consistent with their philosophy.
I would like to clarify that I'm intent on trying to solve this issue, and certainly not witholding information. Rather, I'm hoping to get to the bottom of the problems that users on this thread have been seeing. In the time since this thread started, we saw other issues, too, although I don't have enough information to know what the cause of Mom7's problem is right now (again, I'm more than happy to provide a remote support session, which helps us get more information on the issue, also).
From what I can see, there could be a few causes of this problem:
(1) Kids are disabling the safety minder [possible, though less likely, since this happens when the 5-yo is on the computer, too]
(2) Kids are entering the password to turn off safety minder [not likely, given Mom7's responses]
(3) The safety minder is issuing tamper notifications when it shouldn't [I've seen this issue reported, and encountered it once myself but couldn't reproduce it - I think that this might be the cause of *some* of the issues with tamper detection I've seen]
We've found one machine that exhibits a problem similar to (3) and are trying to troubleshoot it now, but I won't have an update for this thread until I've got an answer from my engineering team.
It's true that it is possible for kids to disable the Norton Safety Minder, but we do alert when this happens. (There is a separate issue the team is investigating regarding these alerts - again, I'll give an update as soon as we have a real answer to share.) I'm not sure whether this particular problem is caused by (1) or (3), though, but I will update the thread as soon as I've got more information.
If anyone who is encountering this problem is willing to work with us on a remote troubleshooting session, please PM me or reply to the thread and I'll get someone from my engineering team to help you right away.
Mijcar, I'm sad to see that you think we're being intentionally misleading here, all I can do is assure you that our goal is to track down the various issues we're seeing and get to the root causes so we can improve the product and help our users.
jgibney wrote:
...Mijcar, I'm sad to see that you think we're being intentionally misleading here, all I can do is assure you that our goal is to track down the various issues we're seeing and get to the root causes so we can improve the product and help our users.
I believed you have mis-paraphrased me.
My irksomeness was directed at the we-know-better-than-thee response we were given by a co-worker of yours, telling us that what we were seeing was actually Symantec's strategy and that the resolution was that we sit down and talk to our children. Would you like me to find a link to the post in question?
I would not mind doing a remote session with someone as long as it could be at a convenient time for me.
My 11 and 15 year old’s have figured out how to “turn Safety Minder off”. When they do this, I receive a notice about it being turned off, but I don’t know how to fix it so that they are not able to turn it off in the first place. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Mom7,
I just sent you a PM. You could access the message by clicking on the 
Thanks,
Katie
Message Edited by KatieQ on 11-11-2009 02:22 PM
My daughter continues to be able to bypass Safety Minder and I do not get any tamper detection messages. My younger daughter works on a different computer and does not bypass, but the activity log does not register anything. What is goingon and what can I do?
Hi hlhgxuA1,
Please make sure you have assigned your children windows user accounts to the account on OnlineFamily.Norton. For details, please read this Help file.
https://onlinefamily.norton.com/familysafety/help/associating-windows-account.jsp
Also, please make sure you don't give your children the administrator rights on the PC that they use.
How does your daughter who is able to bypass NSM log onto the PC, in Safe Mode?
Thanks,
Katie
Message Edited by KatieQ on 11-11-2009 03:57 PM
Also, once you've confirmed whether you're using a limited Windows user account for your daughter,. if you would like us to take a closer look to see what's going on, Katie will arrange a remote session with you at a time that's convenient for you.
Thanks for working with us on this!
Best,
Jody
hlhgxuA1,
I just sent you a PM. You could access the message by clicking on the
Thanks, Katie |
KatieQ wrote:hlhgxuA1,
I just sent you a PM. You could access the message by clicking on the
Thanks,
Katie
I do not know what is a PM. I saw a message in my gmail box, but do not see the icon or do not know where to look for the icon. When clicking on View the Thread in the email from you, I get taken to this very message of yours.
hlhgxuA1 wrote:
KatieQ wrote:hlhgxuA1,
I just sent you a PM. You could access the message by clicking on the
Thanks,
Katie
I do not know what is a PM. I saw a message in my gmail box, but do not see the icon or do not know where to look for the icon. When clicking on View the Thread in the email from you, I get taken to this very message of yours.
Look at where the arrow is pointing in the picture below. Click on the envelope (on your own screen, not in my picture).
