Sentry PC Review 2024: Tracks Everything, But It’s Not For Everyone

I was impressed with the list of features that came with SentryPC, although at times it felt more like spying than monitoring.

A Comprehensive Web Filter

There are two parts of the web filter:

1. Categories: I was able to customize the web filter for each of the kids by choosing which categories should be Enabled or Blocked. In total there are 14 categories to choose from. I enabled several of them, and when the kids attempted to beat the web filter, the browser displayed a message from SentryPC saying “This Event Has Been Blocked.”

   SentryPC will let kids know that the page they are trying to get to is blocked.

   Within this section, there is also the option to allow or block “Word Categories.” There are three options here; Racism, Profanity, and Adult (Sexually themed words). You can set a sensitivity level so that the block is only enforced if the offending words a certain amount of times. However, I set the limit at 1 appearance of a blocked word and activated the filter for each word category.

   Setting the filter with a 1 Word Sensitivity Trigger

   But I was surprised that not only did the filter not block a website with the “F word”, but it also didn’t show up in my Activity Alerts either.
   

   SentryPC didn’t blur the profanity – I blurred the image before uploading it for this review

2. User-defined: I was able to choose specific websites that I wanted to block. I found this helpful for times I didn’t want my kids to go on certain social media or sports websites during homework time.You can also choose specific words to block. This is blocked by the keylogger feature, which means it will only work if the kids type in the specific word. For example, if I block the word “Gun,” when my kids type the word Gun, the browser will automatically close. However, they can type in “Weapons,” and then go to a website about guns.
   I was able to get to Guns.com by searching for “weapons” instead of “Guns”For this feature to be effective you will need to think of words that are associated with this group and add them to the restricted list as well.

Create a Schedule or Set Daily Limits

Both the schedule and daily limit tools work in segments of an hour, which to be honest, I don’t find very helpful. I prefer to have the flexibility to decide exactly what time the computer should be locked, not restricted to locking it at the beginning of an hour, and for the full hour.

I like that I can set up a reminder for each user that the computer will be locked, so they can finish what they were doing, and save their work if necessary. When the time limit expires or the schedule is set to lock, the computer locks, and if you try to use it, it will restart.

With Screenshots and Keylogging, SentryPC Records Everything

There are no secrets when using SentryPC, it literally records everything that happens on the computer. While parents of younger children may think this is overdoing the monitoring, if you have teenagers, it could be the difference between life and death.

The Keylogger records every time anything is typed on the computer. This includes emails, chats, search history, Word, PowerPoint, and more.

The Screenshot feature is constantly taking pictures of the computer monitor and uploading it to the dashboard.

The biggest issue I had with the keylogger and screenshot features that with so many entries, it’s hard to find anything in the dashboard. There were over 300 screenshots taken in just a few hours of computer use, while I was writing this post. I don’t know who has the time to scroll through 500 screenshots and read transcripts, just to monitor their kids. It can be useful if you know what time to look for, or received an Activity Alert (which includes a timestamp, so you’ll know exactly which screenshot to look for, and not scroll through them all) and want to make sure you have the context right before confronting your child.

The Dashboard Can Be Overwhelming

There is a lot of information stored in the dashboard and it took me some time before I was able to quickly find the information that was relevant to me. The most confusing thing was when I went to check out the “Report and Archives” section, it gave me charts, but didn’t include the actual data. In other words, it will tell me how many screenshots it took in a day. To actually see the screenshots, I had to go to the “Activity Logs” section where I could scroll through the images.

There is an “Activities Alerts” section where I was able to see if the kids tried accessing restricted websites, used search terms that I filtered, and screenshots that I should look at. What really frustrated me is that there was no link to view the screenshot, even with the notification, I had to scroll through the screenshot gallery until I found the one that triggered the alert.

My first attempt at installing SentryPC was blocked by my antivirus program, which flagged the file as a Trojan. I contacted customer support to find out why it was triggering this warning. It turns out, instead of just clicking “I have read the Installation Guide” before downloading the program, I should have actually read the installation guide.

Before installing SentryPC, I had to pause the antivirus and add the SentryPC folder as an exclusion. Fortunately, the installation guide has a section on Antivirus Exclusion, which has a step-by-step guide for each of the major antivirus programs. Once that was done, I was able to install the program and restart the antivirus protection.