Windows Live Family Safety

Windows Live Family Safety provides a simple set of tools for keeping children away from questionable material online. With a professional layout and a great deal of flexibility, this is a great tool for cleaning up your home Internet access.

The program's interface is agreeable, with a look and feel similar to all Windows products, and it feels instantly intuitive. The only catch is that you must fill out an online registration, but it's free. From there you can click a single button to choose between three levels of filtering, ranging from nothing to strict. The program smartly includes a list of kid-friendly Web sites it allows. However, you can also customize the filters by adding specific Web sites to block or to allow. When we attempted to view a questionable or blocked site, we were prevented from doing so completely. Try as we might, we couldn't find any gaps in the security. The program's strongest feature may be its ability to apply various filters to different Windows users, so when children log in, their browsing is restricted, but adults logging in have the full and free range of the Internet. Windows Live Family Safety was smooth and effective in all the ways we'd expect a professionally designed Windows program to be.

Windows Live Family Safety is freeware. It provides a sense of ease and security with its ability to block and unblock sites and users, and we recommend it.