Care4Teen is a parental control tool with remote access for Windows, Android, and iOS. The app offers a solution to monitor the activity of your kids on the PC in order to protect them from the numerous online threats they are exposed to. The program allows you to limit and control the content that younger members of the family access, letting you decide which websites or apps are safe for them or not. It works together with the online service for remote management.
To get started with Care4Teen, you need to create a management account where all the settings and permissions will be stored. During the process, you will also be asked to create a teen account that will be associated with the main one. Once everything is up, you will see that the local application is quite simple and has few options; you can turn on/off parental control, activate the security profile, and change the app's visibility mode which can be useful to completely hide the software from viewing, even from the processes list. When the security profile is disabled, it is possible to access any website at all, but if the app detects any suspicious behavior, it will record a ten-second video that you can watch from the online account.
The Care4Teen local tool will monitor the activity of your kids on the PC, informing you not only of the websites they visit but also of the apps they use. This information will be instantly available on the online dashboard, letting you block and report any website or software you consider harmful. This feature did not work at all times though; since some websites were still available after being blocked. My attempt to block Facebook, for example, came up with the same negative results.
Unlike most parental control tools, which filter incoming traffic that matches certain categories, Care4Teen uses a different approach, enabling parents to decide which content is appropriate for their kids. The drawback of this method is that building a list of undesired websites can take too much time and effort, when there are free and accessible applications that can do this automatically. If you do take the time to report websites, however, you will be awarded with points that can be used to buy premium subscriptions.
To sum up, and in spite of the mentioned drawbacks, it's undeniable that there are some nifty ideas behind Care4Teen, and it has the potential to be a great parental control tool. So, if you want to try it out, a free trial version with premium features is available to download and evaluate during 7 days.
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