SurfBlocker Review 2024: Before You Buy, Is It Worth It?

I found SurfBlocker to be a very basic program. It does two things and two things only, it has a web filter and time management tools. There is no dashboard, no parental alerts, no social media monitoring, and no screenshots.

The SurfBlocker App has an easy-to-use interface and I had to enter my password before making any changes.

An Easy-To-Use Web Filter

I was impressed with the simplicity of the web filter. The left side of the SurfBlocker app has three options:

• Block Everything: This was the easiest way to block internet access for the computer. One thing I liked about this is the “Exceptions” option. It was helpful if the kids said that they only needed the computer for homework or to check their email. It gives me the flexibility to keep certain services unblocked or allow specific websites and programs.

• Block selected websites and services: I found this to be a great feature when I needed to block websites that were distracting the kids (social media, sports, and entertainment sites, for example) from doing what they were supposed to be doing. It isn’t really necessary for blocking dangerous or adult websites since those are taken care of in the next category. You can’t have both this option and the Block Everything category activated at the same time.
• Block harmful content at all times: This is the filter that I always leave on. It blocks websites by categories and also gives the option to add specific websites to the blacklist. While I didn’t have any “false positives” or clean websites that were blocked, no filter is perfect and it would be nice if there was an option to add websites to a protected or whitelist.

Regardless of which filter you use, when the kids try accessing a site that is blocked, they will see the standard “Site can’t be reached” message from the web browser. There is no mention of SurfBlocker, which is useful if you don’t want the kids to know that you’ve put a web filter on the computer.

Screen Time Addiction Prevention

There is both a daily schedule and daily time limit option, although it wasn’t clear to me how to set them up. At first, it seemed simple, click on the Schedule or Daily Limits option and set the limits. However, when I did this, nothing happened and the internet remained unblocked.

Here is what I figured out you have to do:

1. Turn on the Block Everything option. This will only start blocking the internet when the limit has been reached or the schedule is set to restrict the internet.
2. Open either the Schedule or Daily Limits and set your limitations.

I like that there is a setting in the Daily Limit section where you can choose what to do in a situation where the daily time limit has expired, but there is still time remaining on the schedule. In other words, when my son uses up his 3 hours by 6:30 pm, and the schedule won’t block the internet until 7 pm.

When you have the daily limit on, the kids will be responsible to start the timer when they are using the computer. They will have to click on the SurfBlocker logo on the icon tray to open the application. When the timer is paused, assuming the schedule is either turned off or set for the internet to be off, the internet will be blocked.

A unique feature that SurfBlocker has is called Addiction Stopper. It will block access to the SurfBlocker application, which will prevent anyone, even you, from changing the time limits.

The installation process was quick and simple. It took less than 2 minutes to get everything up and running. The one thing you have to remember to do is temporarily turn off your antivirus program, otherwise, it might flag the file as a trojan. This is standard with monitoring programs since they need access to block your internet, which can be viewed as a threat.