Restricts the Parents not the kids – Bitdefender Central Review

I decided to go all out on this. It seemed like the perfect combination of device security and parental controls. Apart from some random behaviour from time to time (like parts of the AV suite randomly disabling itself for no reason) the computer side of things was fine. Next to setup the child profiles. THe child profiles is where it all falls down. URLs are blocked by broad categories, not by discrete URLs (despite what the app claims). I have website tracking turned on for my youngest kids, yet I can only tell that “your child attempted to access a site in the hosting category” or “your child attempted to access a site in the news category”. Tracking down false positives becomes almost impossible. Click on manage categories from the block screen and the app doesn’t go anywhere. Find a website blocked that shouldn’t be, simply add it to the URL whitelist; but there must be some special syntax (no instructions) because I’ve added the same url to the whitelist five different ways and it’s still blocked by bitdefender. I’ve given this app 2 stars because the screen time part of the app actually works, and shuts off when it’s meant to, and correctly monitors the amount of time used. Otherwise, every other part of the app is obtuse in how it works, false positives are impossible to track and to whitelist. It’s impossible to know what sites are being blocked or even if there are false negatives (In really want to know if there are bad sites being accessed that bitdefender hasn’t “categorised” yet. If this app doesn’t improve before renewal, I definitely won’t be renewing my subscription. It scores great on form, but low on function.
Review by TonyMoroney69 on Bitdefender Central.