Covenant Eyes Review

Covenant Eyes is a software package that loads on your computer similar to other accountability & filtering software.  Unlike X3Watch, Covenant Eyes is not free.  You will pay a monthly fee based on what services you use and how many accounts you need.

The number of user accounts you choose will depend on how you want to police the internet in your house.  I have one account on my computer and it automatically logs on when my computer starts up.  Under this one account, all computer users in my house will be subject to the same level of internet filtering and accountability reporting.  This works for me, but may not for you.  Sometimes the best approach is one account for the children and one for the adults.  If you have more than one account, each account will have a separate login to use the internet.

There are two main functions of covenant eyes: Internet filtering and Accountability.  You have the option to use filtering, accountability or both.

The filter will block pornographic and questionable websites.  You can set the level of the filter based on the user as long as you set up separate user accounts.  You may also specify websites to always block or always allow.  This is great if you like a stricter level of filter, but want to allow one or two sites that would normally be blocked at that filter level.  The filter also gives you the ability to allow a user to access the internet at certain times of the day and for a certain total amount of time.  This works especially well if you want to limit the total time spent on the internet or prevent late night internet surfing while they should be sleeping!

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The accountability part of the software will log all of you visited websites.  This report is available to both you and your accountability partner on the internet through covenant eyes’ website.  Covenant eyes scores each site you visit.  The scoring is done in real time and scans a web page before it loads.  A low scoring site means it is harmless, but a higher scoring site means you might want to take a look into what it is.  Your report will only list higher scoring sites to keep the report useful and to not alarm the user.  A summary at the top of the report will tell the user at a glance whether there was anything to be concerned about for the reporting period selected.  Your accountability report will also list any questionable searches performed.  If someone was inquiring about ‘bikini photos’ they would be listed on this report.

One unique feature of covenant eyes is the panic button.  The panic button is available for the user to click in case they are overcome with the urge to view pornography or something else on the internet.  The panic button will disable your internet and forbid any websites to load until you can call the Covenant eyes hotline and have them turn it back on.  This is a great feature that allows someone to calm down and come back down to reality before returning to the internet.  If temptation is too much for you to handle the panic button is there for you.

My overall feelings about covenant eyes are positive.  The only downside in my opinion is that pages take an extra second or two to load up, but when I consider the benefits and think back to the days of dial-up, I can accept this.  I really like the adjustability of the filter, the accountability reporting and the panic button.  I highly recommend paying the monthly fee for both filter and accountability services.  The accountability report is much better than X3Watch because of the ranking system and the fact that a complete log of sites can be reviewed.  The filtering is very flexible and allows you to police the use of the internet far easier than other ways.  I feel that my kids and I are protected well from obscenities.  The accountability report is an added layer of protection should my wife or I become tempted to visit a website we would not want the other to know about.

Get your FREE 30 Day Trial of Covenant Eyes.

Disclosure statement

Covenant Eyes Accountability software review

I have seen the ads for the free accountability software called X3watch for a while, but never tried it out since we have been using other software.  Just recently, we bought a new computer, switched internet service and dropped our old internet filtering service.  This presented the perfect opportunity to try out some new software and X3watch was one of a few at the top of the list.

I visited xxxchurch.com and downloaded the software very quickly.  Installation was very fast as well.  The only required actions upon install are to name the computer you are monitoring and to give two email addresses for the reports.  That is it.

Give a little thought first before inputting the email addresses.  The first email address should be yours so that you can review the same report as your accountability partner.  The second email address will be your accountability partner.  You both will receive an email confirming that reports will be forthcoming at either 2 or 4 week intervals. 

I input my own email address and then my wife’s email address.  My email is private to myself and my wife’s is private to herself.  I cannot delete the email from her inbox or vice versa.  We can both keep tabs on that computer for our children’s usage and each other’s usage.  This keeps the whole family accountable.  Consider the situation you have and in what way you can maintain the integrity of the accountability.

After two weeks, the report showed up in my email inbox with the subject: X3watch – Accountability report.  This report will only show you sites that are possibly questionable.   

My report listed only six sites as questionable.  None of the sites on my report were pornography related, except for the abattleplan website.  It listed a Barbie website and some of it’s subdomains along with a facebook subdomain as questionable.  The software did correctly identify this website, but the others were wrongly tagged. 

Pros 

• Free
• It is better than not having any accountability software
• Unnoticeably runs in the background

 Cons 

• Questionable sites on the report require you to either know what they are or click on the link to review them.  You could expose yourself to pornography while checking sites.
•  There is concern in the criteria for flagging a website as questionable. 
• Since the software resides on your computer, it could be circumvented by savvy users.

 X3Watch accountability software is a basic no frills way to establish internet accountability, however it lacks some very important features to make it totally effective.  The reporting leaves much to be desired.  Unless the questionable website has an obviously pornographic title, you need to click the link to review the site.  Also, the way a site makes the questionable list makes me wonder how well it works.  If Barbie and Facebook make the questionable list will the software flag these harmless sites and ignore some pornographic sites?  The software sits on your computer and therefore can be circumvented easily by a savvy computer user.  Your teen would figure out a way around this. 

The bottom line is if you need accountability, this may work for you.  You could use this along with Open DNS to get the full suite of accountability and internet filtering.  If you are very serious about protecting your and your family’s purity or if you want to really quit using pornography, you should spend some money on better software.  The lack of site logging, possible circumvention and the sketchy reporting leave a lot of holes available for the addict to take advantage of.

When you see ads for free internet filtering software you are skeptical as I am.  What is the catch? Am I downloading spyware?

I have been using Open DNS now for about six months and have decided to let you know about my experience with it.  Let’s first look at what Open DNS is and how it works.

Open DNS is an online filtering service and nothing is installed on your computer.  You will not experience any difference in your internet speed.  Open DNS works by editing a few settings in your modem or router.

Your modem or router contains internet settings that you can access through your internet browser by typing in the IP address.  Your modem or router will have a sticker on it that says: IP address 192.08.01.1 or something similar.  You type this into the address bar and you can alter your settings.  Within these settings are your DNS settings.  You will modify these DNS settings to those supplied by Open DNS.

Your DNS settings or domain name server settings link to a server which returns a website every time you type in a website name.  When you want to go to Ebay, you type in Ebay.com and the request is sent to the DNS which translates that request into the IP address of Ebay which could be 192.08.01.1.  DNS servers allow you to use domain names instead of IP addresses to access websites.   You can see how much easier it is to remember names instead of number sequences for websites.

Open DNS takes your website request and returns either the website, or a blocked domain page based on the content filter level you choose.  Your website request is checked against a database of domains that are categorized by content.  There are over 50 Content categories which include: pornography, Adware, drugs, gambling, nudity, and much more.  You can choose filtering levels that are predefined or make a custom level where you choose which content categories to block.  All of your filter settings and reporting are done online through the Open DNS dashboard.

Block Websites by Category

 

Your Websites Visted Log

We use Open DNS on our home network.  My home network consists of three desktops and occasionally a laptop.  All the computers that access the internet in my home are subject to the Open DNS filter because my DNS settings are made through my router. 

I have been very satisfied with this free internet filtering service.  I use the free service which stores two weeks in your log and does everything I want it to do to keep the filth off my computers.  Most of my blocked websites deal with Adware or Phishing threats according to my log.  I also get to see what sites my family has visited without looking at each computer’s browser history.

Here are the advantages and uses for Open DNS:

• It is Free
• It doesn’t run on your computer to slow it down or uninstall it by others
• You can create a custom filtering list to filter what you don’t want on your computers
• The online log will show you all the domains visited by any computer on your network and cannot be erased or hidden locally. 
• You can block image searches in Yahoo & Google.  Pornography is rampant in the image searches.
• Do you suspect your husband or teen is accessing pornography but you can’t prove it?  Use Open DNS and password protect your modem or router settings.  This way they cannot turn off the filtering from the Open DNS dashboard or temporarily change the DNS server settings to view Pornography.

The disadvantages and weaknesses of Open DNS:

• It is not accountability software.  Accountability software reports your website access to your accountability partner.  This is set up by you and you will hold the passwords to control the content and is easily disabled by you.  Unless you give the router & Open DNS passwords to someone else to control, it will not keep you accountable.  Use this along with accountability software.
• Be sure to password protect your modem or router.  If your router settings are not protected, someone who is a bit tech savvy will be able to get around this filter.
• This does not block video searches in Google or Yahoo.  There may be another category such as video sharing that takes care of this, but pay attention to your logs. 

Bottom line:  This filter is a great alternative to software you have to pay for.  In fact, I think this is better than most of the paid software.  This is the first line of defense to protecting you and your family from internet pornography.  You need to be vigilant by checking the site logs and using accountability software as well.  We are ultimately responsible for keeping our family and ourselves pure online.