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.

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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.