However, Online Family will not allow parents to hide this monitoring from their kids. "As a security company, we consciously decided not to introduce anything that's spyware-like," Group Product Manager Jody Gibney told the Industry Standard in a telephone interview.

This transparency crops up elsewhere. Like most child protection programs, Norton Online Family can be configured to block objectionable websites. But here, built-in messaging allows kids to immediately request an exception to the ban. In addition, parents can put together a set of "house rules" which the children can access and read whenever they wish. "We recommend in setup that parents have a talk with children and review the house rules," Gibney told us. This approach leads to haggling, she admitted, "but children more likely to abide by house rules that they agreed upon." According to the company's press release, the software is designed to encourage an "open, ongoing dialogue" between parents and children.

Other features include time management (because how much time a child spends on the Internet can be more of a problem than what he or she does there), custom alerts to tell warn parents when rules are being broken, and access to social networking information.

Symantec hasn't set a release date for the final version of Norton Online Family, but Gibney told us it wouldn't happen before late April. Pricing has yet to be set.