Cost: $174.99 to purchase the hardware device, $19.99 per year for the service
Website: http://www.pandorashope.com/
Overview:
Pandoras Hope is a hardware filter that protects any device that connects to it either through a wire or through the built-in wireless capability. It provides wireless access to the Internet, so if you already have a wireless access point device, you will want to turn off its wireless capabilities and use the Pandora’s Hope wireless instead. There are ports on the Pandora’s Hope device so you can connect wired devices through this as well. Any device that connects to the Internet through the Pandora’s Hope device is automatically filtered based on your filter settings.
Installation:
Installation is very simple. There is no software to install – you simply need to connect the device where your Internet comes into your home, and configure the device for your filter settings. The color-coded wires make it very easy to connect the device correctly. Once the device is connected inline in your network, any device that accesses the Internet will be filtered based on the policy you choose.
Features:
There are several features that allow you to choose how the Internet filtering will function. Pandora’s Hope supports the concept of “white list” (always allowed),”b lack list” (always blocked) and “grey list” (allow or block based on the content). You can also turn on what they refer to as “tech blocking”, which allows control over other technologies such as peer-to-peer, chat and instant messaging.
Parents can also control the “naughtiness” scale, which controls how carefully the filter inspects the websites in the “grey list”. Advertisements can be blocked altogether. If this feature is turned on, you will see the Pandora’s Hope logo on web pages instead of the advertisements that are on the page. If you want to see the ad anyway, a simple click on the Pandora’s Hope logo will show you the ad.
There is an override feature, so if you need to allow temporary access to a blocked site, you may do so simply by entering the administrator password.
Since this is a hardware device, there is no software to install. You can connect both wireless and wired devices, so this box can protect your entire home network – including game consoles, and cell phones that use WiFi connections.
While it is possible to get reports from the device showing what sites were visited, which were blocked, etc, the reporting itself is not very robust. The reports show which sites were visited, when they were visited, and how many times they were visited. It also shows which sites were blocked. But, you can only view the reports by date – there is no feature to “show all blocks”, or “show all visits to XYZ site”.
Pros:
Scope of protection has to be the top reason for purchasing this device. Since it is a hardware device, it protects every device that connects through it – which means that your game consoles, friend laptops, WiFi cell phones, etc are all protected while using this device. As opposed to a software filter that must be installed on the computer it is protecting, the Pandora’s Hope device is a set-it-and-forget-it system. Once it is installed, everything is protected.
The ad blocking is a great feature. Although it gets old seeing the Pandora’s Hope” logo everywhere, it does make for a better Internet Use experience than seeing some of the provocative and inappropriate ads on places like social networks and search engines that are so popular today.
If you have multiple computers in your home, this is a very cost-effective solution. The main cost is a one-time upfront fee to purchase the device – from then on , you pay only the small subscription fee regardless of how many devices are accessing the Internet through the device. If you have multiple computers, with different operating systems, this is a great solution.
Cons:
The downside of a hardware device is that your laptops are not protected when they are used outside of your home. Once the laptop is taken to a different location, such a school, library or hotspot in town, there is no filtering to protect the Internet access.
Reporting is very rudimentary. It is very similar to simply looking at the history in the web browser – there is no categorization of sites, and there is no summary or comprehensive overview page. You can’t click to visit URLs in the report to investigate whether the site is a “bad” site or not.