Net Nanny is a brand of content-control software

Content-control software

Content-control software, also known as censorware or web filtering software, is a term for software designed and optimized for controlling what content is permitted to a reader, especially when it is used to restrict material delivered over the Web...

 marketed primarily at parent

Parent

A parent is a caretaker of the offspring in their own species. In humans, a parent is of a child . Children can have one or more parents, but they must have two biological parents. Biological parents consist of the male who sired the child and the female who gave birth to the child...

s as a way to control a child's computer activity. The flagship product allows a computer owner to block and filter Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 content, place time limits on use, and block desktop PC games.

History

The original version of Net Nanny was released in 1995. In January 2007, it was purchased by ContentWatch, Inc.

Features

There are Net Nanny products compatible with Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

, and Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

systems, and certain smartphones . Among the available features are the ability to restrict file sharing, block and filter websites and social networking, and restrict usage to preset limits. There are also features only for owners/administrators such as: activity reports, remote management, monitoring of instant-messages, and the sending of text-messages to a cell phone detailing a user's activity. Additionally, on the smartphone version, there are features to monitor and report phone calls and text messages. Net Nanny can also keep passwords entered on specific user profiles of any kind on file and accessible to the administrator.

Flaws

NetNanny will block websites with social media widgets as social networking websites, therefore blocking many websites that aren't meant to be blocked. In earlier versions, a back door system existed. The child need only enter ~frontdoor in these versions to disable NetNanny, therefore making it useless if the child finds this backdoor system. On a windows operating system, if the child is an administrator or has access to an administrator account, NetNanny can be removed without any uninstall password by running command prompt as an administrator and then typing in:

1. netsh winsock reset catalog
2. netsh int ip reset reset.log