Kaspersky Safe Kids parental control app review

Our Verdict

Kaspersky Safety Kids is an amazing bargain, offering total-featured support on unlimited phones and computers for a very low price.

For

• Amazing price
• Impressive free tier
• Broad platform back up
• Extensive feature set

Against

• Somewhat limited on iOS
• Web portal consistently wearisome
• Poorly designed mobile apps

Tom'southward Guide Verdict

Kaspersky Condom Kids is an astonishing bargain, offering full-featured back up on unlimited phones and computers for a very low toll.

Pros

• +

  Amazing toll

• +

  Impressive free tier

• +

  Broad platform support

• +

  Extensive feature gear up

Cons

• -

  Somewhat express on iOS

• -

  Web portal consistently slow

• -

  Poorly designed mobile apps

Kaspersky Safe Kids: Specifications

Cost: Free to $xv/year
Number of devices: Unlimited
Platforms: Android, iOS, Mac, Windows
Web portal for parents: Yep
Telephone call logging: None
Text logging: None
Call blocking: None
Text blocking: None
Geofencing: Aye
Location tracking: Yes
Location history: None
Spider web monitoring: Yes (limited on iOS)
Web filter: Yes (limited on iOS)
Time limits: Yes (limited on iOS)
Scheduling: Yes (limited on iOS)
App management: Yes (express on iOS)
App blocker: Yes (limited on iOS)

Kaspersky is a large antivirus visitor that offers parental command software, so you can be assured that the visitor isn't going away anytime presently. Kaspersky Safety Kids is most notable for the incredible value that it offers for a quite broad feature set up.

Both the costless tier of Kaspersky Safe Kids, which supports unlimited kid profiles and devices, every bit well as its premium offering that costs only $fourteen.99 a yr to unlock the full feature gear up, accident away the competition from a value perspective.

While both the Kaspersky spider web portal and its mobile apps take undergone redesigns since I last reviewed the app, the makeovers have non really improved things. The web portal remains exceedingly tedious and the mobile apps, while aesthetically improved, are however poorly organized.

As is the case with many of the best parental-command apps that I tested, Kaspersky Safe Kids' functionality on iOS is dramatically limited compared to Android.

Android users on a budget who want a flake more than what Google Family unit Link tin can offer should give Kaspersky Safe Kids a shot. With its fantabulous free tier and a costless trial of the premium tier available, there is no reason to skip Kaspersky. The web portal can exist frustratingly irksome, but if y'all tin can alive with that, then Kaspersky Safety Kids is a fantastic value.

Read on for the residue of our Kaspersky Rubber Kids review.

Kaspersky Safety Kids: Costs and what's covered

Kaspersky Safe Kids uses a freemium model. Y'all can use some features completely free or pay a yearly subscription to unlock the app'southward total functionality. Kaspersky has kept the toll for its premium tier astoundingly low for years at just $14.99 a yr for an unlimited number of child profiles and devices on all major platforms.

No other paid service that I tested is fifty-fifty vaguely shut. ESET Parental Control for Android is $30 and covers only ane platform; Norton covers 3 (Windows, Android and iOS) at $fifty per year. As with those apps, Kaspersky Prophylactic Kids is also bundled with the parent visitor'south antivirus software.

(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

Kaspersky also offers one of the most feature-complete costless options on the market. It includes web filtering, app management, basic screen-time management and a new prophylactic search in YouTube feature.

Other freemium options like Qustodio and OurPact offering somewhat comparable features for gratis, just Kaspersky outdoes them by roofing an unlimited number of kid accounts and devices, while the others limit monitoring to only a unmarried child and device.

Upgrading to the Kaspersky paid tier gets you additional features, and given the depression yearly toll of $fifteen, the paid option is certainly worth considering. The paid features include advanced screen-time management, a kid locator, a battery tracker, social-network monitoring, YouTube search history and real-time alerts and so you know the instant something is wrong.

Kaspersky Safe Kids supports virtually all the major platforms with Android, iOS, Windows and macOS. If yous demand Kindle Burn down support, y'all'll need to look to either Internet Nanny or Qustodio.

Kaspersky Safe Kids: Installation

As with most of these services, you should first create your own Kaspersky account. Once y'all've logged into your My Kaspersky using either the spider web portal or the mobile app, you tin can then create child accounts by adding a name, yr of birth and either an avatar or photo for each child.

(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

Kaspersky gives parents some dialogue cues or talking points for explaining to a child why you lot are installing a parental control app on their device.  Differing phrases are offered depending on the age of the child.

This kind of thing is nowadays throughout the Kaspersky app, and while it doesn't rise to the level of guidance that Cyberspace Nanny offers, I do think it's a overnice touch. You can hands dismiss these suggestions if yous don't discover them helpful.

From in that location yous but install the app on your kid(s) device(s). Kaspersky doesn't handle this process quite every bit adeptly every bit Norton Family, my gold standard on the Android side, but information technology does ensure that you get all the necessary permissions checked.

Recent versions of both Android and iOS don't allow you grant permanent location privileges to an app during installation.  You'll demand to get into the operating arrangement'south settings menu and toggle the Kaspersky app'due south location privileges to "e'er" if you want location tracking to work.

Kaspersky Safety Kids: App direction

Kaspersky goes about app management in a slightly different way than other parental-control apps. It treats app direction like web filtering, with category-based blocking on Android. On iOS, your only option is to cake apps that take age restrictions of whatever kind.

(Epitome credit: Tom's Guide)

Simplistic though information technology may be, the iOS app blocking does work. Information technology immediately removed all the apps on my test device that had a rating above the stated age of my kid. However, this does phone call into question the validity of some of the app ratings, as while YouTube carries a 17+ rating in the App Store, Tik Tok gets a 12+ rating.

Android users get a much more extensive feature set up, beginning with that category-based blocking. At that place are a total of 17 categories, and you tin toggle each one as either "immune" or "forbidden."

This doesn't delete or hibernate the apps — it but triggers a pop-up indicating "Using this app is non allowed." The kid can inquire for permission to utilize the app, although Kaspersky doesn't give them a text box to make an argument as Norton does.

(Prototype credit: Tom'due south Guide)

While this is obviously a large pace up from what'south available on the iOS side, if this were all that was available for app management on Android, I'd be pretty disappointed.

Fortunately, at that place is more to it. If you ringlet to the bottom of the Apps page you lot volition run across "Exclusions." Tap there and you will encounter the full listing of apps installed on your kid'southward device, with the ability to brand determinations about apps one by one.

Your choices for each app include "Allowed," "Blocked" or "Limited." The outset two are what you would wait; the third lets yous fix daily time limits (or splits between weekday and weekends) for individual apps. It lets y'all become every bit granular every bit you lot want, with a full 24-hour setting broken down to the minute.

Kaspersky Safe Kids: Web filtering

Kaspersky Safe Kids identifies this section as just "Net."  It offers you lot some general settings, such as like toggling on Prophylactic Search to block inappropriate content when using Bing, Google, Yahoo!, Mail.ru or Yandex. (The last two are pop in Russia, Kaspersky's home country.) Safe Search can also be applied to YouTube. Finally, you can choose to be notified in the event of any searches for restricted content.

(Image credit: Tom'due south Guide)

There are xiv dissimilar categories that can exist filtered, and each can be gear up as "Allowed," "Forbidden" or "Warning." Warning brings upwards a full splash screen if your child tries to visit that site, telling them visiting it isn't brash and that the child will need to click "go there anyway" to go along.

You can as well create exclusions to either block or allow specific sites, and yous can choose to block all websites outside of your specific exclusions. While Kaspersky Rubber Kids tin filter most major browsers (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari), it doesn't piece of work with some others, then if web filtering is important to you so consider blocking culling browsers in the app-direction organization.

Kaspersky Rubber Kids: Time direction

Device use is Kaspersky's proper name for its time-management features. It'south reasonably total featured, but more convoluted and cumbersome to prepare than information technology should be.

First you demand to determine the type of monitoring you would like to accept. iOS and Android both support "Statistics only" and "Show alarm," while Android alone gets the choice to "Block device."

(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

Statistics will but brandish usage. Show warning will create a pop-upward letting the child know they have reached their fourth dimension limit for the 24-hour interval.  On Android, the device or apps tin can be blocked completely, leaving open only calls and SMS messaging.

While the Kaspersky app interface is painfully dated, you can get incredibly granular with the settings. You can choose a daily limit for weekdays versus the weekend, or for each twenty-four hours of the week, from no time at all up to 24 hours, down to the infinitesimal.

Downtime lets you set up intervals of managed time, and yous can ready as many as you similar, over again downwards to the infinitesimal. Equally I mentioned in the app-management section, on Android yous can also set separate time limits for specific apps.

Kaspersky Safe Kids does permit children asking more than time when they have run out for the mean solar day. Requests will prompt you with a notification, and you lot can decide if you'd like to grant the kids more fourth dimension. Considering Kaspersky tin can't actually stop them from continuing to utilise their device by the cutoff time on iOS, it will just notify you about that.

Kaspersky calls this "Where is my child?" and it is the well-nigh fully featured implementation of location tracking that I've seen. It gives you a lot of data regarding a child's present location beyond just the pinpoint on a Google Map.

(Paradigm credit: Tom's Guide)

Kaspersky Safe Kids tells you how long ago it received the coordinates, how accurate information technology believes the coordinates to be and what the coordinates are based on (GPS, Wi-Fi, cell-belfry triangulation or some combination). Information technology also shows you how much battery life your kid has left on their device, which tin can be critically important.

Kaspersky also offers geofencing, referred to every bit "immune areas." You can define as many locations as yous like, with not just where the child should be but when and how long y'all expect them to be at that place. You tin set the size of these round areas from around 600 feet across to more than 124 miles across, which is almost comically large.

Social networks
This specifically allows for monitoring of activity on Facebook and the Russian social-media site VK. Setting upward social-media monitoring involves sending a link to your child, who then needs to use information technology to log into the relevant social network.

(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

If either network is a major portion of your kid's social media life, then this characteristic might exist valuable, but given the abundance of other social networks it seems a chip meaningless to monitor just one or two.

Kaspersky Safe Kids review: Lesser line

Kaspersky Safe Kids blows me away in terms of value. Given what the residuum of the market is charging, it could double its price and even so represent a solid purchase. At $14.99 per yr, if you tin deal with its little quirks and irritations, Kaspersky Safe Kids is hard to turn down.

If you want to check upwardly on your kids' activities all the time and go along very shut tabs on them, I might propose looking elsewhere as Kaspersky's web portal and parental app tin can exist frustrating to utilize multiple times a day. Simply for parents who want to fix some blocks, filters and scheduling then just await at the reports every day or 2, then Kaspersky Safe Kids is an excellent pick, peculiarly for Android users.

A self-professed "wearer of wearables," Sean Riley is a Senior Writer for Laptop Mag who has been covering tech for more than a decade. He specializes in covering phones and, of course, article of clothing tech, but has besides written about tablets, VR, laptops, and smart home devices, to name simply a few. His articles have besides appeared in Tom's Guide, TechTarget, Phandroid, and more.

Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/kaspersky-safe-kids

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