Kaspersky Safe Kids Review 2024: Gives Parents Power and Peace of Mind

Kaspersky Safe Kids offers parents the ability to monitor their children’s online and offline activities with its parental control software. Geo-fencing features show a parent where their child is located, as well as allowing parents to set up notifications if a child leaves the approved area. Online, Safe Kids monitors social media posts, text messages, websites visited, and even what your kids are watching on YouTube.

Parents who install Safe Kids on iOS devices have slightly less functionality, losing the text message monitoring feature, but are still able to monitor internet usage and geo-location. Installation on any other compatible device gives you full functionality, which, in turn, gives you the ability to monitor your kids’ activities as well as open up a dialogue about good internet usage habits.

Safe Kids even includes suggestions for parents on how to talk to their children about a variety of topics. Overall, we’d feel comfortable using Safe Kids with our own family and recommending the product to others.

Kaspersky Safe Kids review at a glance

Kaspersky Safe Kids expert overview

Kaspersky Safe Kids gives you a broad overview of your child’s device usage as well as helpful tips and insights into talking to your child about safe internet usage. You have the ability to monitor up to 500 devices, and, as far as we can tell, Kaspersky doesn’t sell your child’s information to third parties.

We appreciate the child locator as well as the social media tracker. Both of those tackle problems that plague modern families. You will feel secure letting your younger children attend activities like a dance class, karate lesson, or sports practice without needing to be present, since you’ll see where your child is on the tracker. It also offers the opportunity to talk to older children and teens about the internet, what stuff can be out there, and how to best handle social media posts and online activity. Overall, it’s a good product that increases safety.

Kaspersky Safe Kids pros and cons

Kaspersky Safe Kids prices and subscriptions

Kaspersky offers two plans – one with just Safe Kids and one that also includes an antivirus as well as other cybersecurity features. No matter which you choose, you’ll receive all of the Safe Kids features.

The only downside is that there’s less functionality for iPhone users with either plan. This is pretty standard, though, with parental control apps, as Apple has its own parental controls. Otherwise, there are a variety of features that help you help your kids make better decisions online.

Kaspersky Safe Kids plan comparison

The standalone Kaspersky Safe Kids Protection plan is reasonably priced at an introductory price of $20.99/first yr but renews at $22.99/yr after that. As far as renewal pricing goes, that’s not a bad deal.

Competitors like Norton start at a higher yearly price. While the Norton Family price doesn’t currently skyrocket upon renewal, other Norton products that include Norton Family can reach renewal prices of more than 50% of the initial price. We find Kaspersky Safe Kids to be much more reasonable.

If you go with the Safe Kids Family Protection plan you get Kaspersky’s antivirus software, data leak protection, a password leak checker, and other cybersecurity features that can increase your overall security. The price for this starts at $74.99/first yr and goes up to $149.99/yr afterward.

This is basically the introductory price for Kaspersky Premium antivirus with a free year of Safe Kids added on. But we noticed that Kaspersky Premium renews at $149.99/yr, so you’re technically getting Safe Kids for free even after that first year.

If your main concern is protecting your kids, you won’t be missing out on any Safe Kids features with the standalone version.

Kaspersky Safe Kids features

Safe Kids has many robust features that can help parents feel more at ease. As long as you’re installing the parental controls software on a device that isn’t running iOS (iPhones, iPads, and iPods), you’ll have all of the features and functionality, no matter if you purchase Safe Kids by itself or as part of a larger Kaspersky package.

That said, iOS users can still reap most of Safe Kids’ benefits but won’t have text message monitoring.

Content monitoring

When properly installed, Safe Kids monitors online activity as well as messages sent to your child. You’ll be able to see websites visited, search results, and other activities your child is participating in online.

By connecting your child’s social media profiles, you can see activity on there as well. If you’re concerned about what YouTube videos your child is watching, Safe Kids gives you a breakdown of what videos are accessed.

It’s important to note that the service has to be set up in its entirety to monitor all these aspects.

Social media and phone apps

With social media monitoring, you’ll be able to see all the posts on your child’s timeline as well as their friends. Kaspersky notes that a significant change in the number of friends your child has can indicate if there’s an issue. Make sure your child knows the privacy settings on each social account and how to turn them on.

Predators can legally take photos of your child from their (or your) public social media accounts and repost them on websites that sexually objectify your child. It’s important to remind your kids — and anyone sharing photos of your children online — to set special permissions so that only friends can see the pictures. With Safe Kids, you can monitor the photos your child shares online.

YouTube Safe Search

Kaspersky shows you exactly what videos your kids have viewed online. Videos can be deleted from YouTube’s search history, but Kaspersky keeps a record of everything that crosses your child’s device.

Kaspersky also recently expanded its iOS features to help parents with web filtering and screen time limits. This means you can set a limit for and monitor how much your child is accessing the video streaming service.

Web browsers

Safe Kids gives you the option to filter content based on age restrictions but also allows you to blacklist inappropriate content and forbidden sites. This allows for a highly customizable experience so your children aren’t wandering around the internet unchecked.

Kaspersky achieves this layer of protection with a Chrome plug-in on Android devices. It also disables Safari on iOS devices, so children have to use the Safe Kids browser to access the internet.

Screen time management

We set limits on device use and checked how our child was using their time. One thing we found interesting was that the device wasn’t blocked after screen time limits were reached. We weren’t sure if this was a limited function because we used an iPhone or if it was because we set our test child’s age to 13.

Children are notified when their screen time is almost up, which lets parents open a dialogue with kids about healthy screen behavior.

You can see an overall view of all the screen time on all your child’s devices, or you can choose by device. It’ll give you a daily breakdown of when your child is spending most of their time online. Whether they’re chatting on a Discord server or trying out the latest TikTok video recipe, you’ll have a better understanding of your child’s interests through Safe Kids’ monitoring.

Location tracking and geo-fencing

Kids love independence, but it’s difficult as a parent to let them go and participate in activities on their own, no matter what their age.

When they’re 7 or 8 and want to attend dance class without you sitting there, the best way to keep yourself sane is by having a geo-tracker on your kid. Safe Kids makes sure that the tracker is your child’s phone or other mobile device. You have the ability to see where they are and where they’ve been.

During our Safe Kids hands-on trial run, our 13-year-old son we named Testing (yes, this is a fake kid), was tracked in real time using the Safe Kids geo-fencing technology. We could see where he went, set boundaries and time restrictions for where he was allowed to be, and even receive notifications if he left that area.

You’ll also see the amount of battery life your kid's device has left, so you know if it's safe for them to stay out longer or if it’s time to come home.

Activity reports

Our son, Testing, is 13, so there is already a set of permissions that comes preloaded for his age group. We can, however, change those up and add different permissions as we see fit.

Activity reporting is the most robust of all the features and really allows you to filter the content your child receives online.

Our experience testing Kaspersky Safe Kids

We didn’t find an issue downloading Safe Kids onto our iPhone, but the only way many of the features work is by creating a new Apple ID for your child. Honestly, we found this cumbersome and confusing and could understand why parents wouldn’t want to use it.

As far as the functionality of the features, however, we were impressed with the level of sophistication behind each of them. We also read deeply into the privacy policy and were glad to see Kaspersky didn’t want to sell our child’s data. Parents, beware, though, you’re fair game.

Kaspersky Safe Kids setup

It’s almost effortless to set Safe Kids up as long as you’re not installing it on an iPhone. If you’re installing it on an iPhone, it gets significantly more difficult.

For a non-iPhone setup, all you need to do is create the child profile, scan the QR code, and download the app. For laptop computers, there’s a download link you can use. Downloading via the QR code or link will instantly link the device to your Safe Kids account.

Setting up a child’s profile means no data is shared from that device; however, there is an awful lot of data collected. If you choose to set up a parent profile on a device, there is a chance your data is shared with third parties and for marketing purposes.

There is a certain amount of data that needs to be collected on the child’s device for the features to work, but there’s no need for parents’ device information to be collected en masse and shared at Kaspersky’s discretion.

Kaspersky Safe Kids monitoring in action

Data shows up in the dashboard almost immediately. We appreciate the fact that you can monitor your child in real time but were frustrated that our testing fell short because we didn’t have an additional Apple ID for our fake child to fully be able to use the product on our iPhone.

We think that a lot of the monitoring would be more efficient on a laptop, but parents whose children have iPhones might miss out due to the difficulty in setting up the product on that operating system.

What we were able to see was very useful. There is a lot of information available in the dashboard on your child’s internet activity. There are also tips sprinkled throughout to help parents talk to their children about appropriate internet usage.

Kaspersky Safe Kids customer support

Customer support is mostly self-help guides and forums. If you need to contact someone or initiate a chat, you’ll have to fill out a form first and wait for the contact information.

We tried to get assistance with a general question, but the form wouldn’t allow us to ask a general question. It wasn’t user friendly.

Does Kaspersky Safe Kids collect your data?

Yes, it collects an enormous amount of data. Children’s data is used strictly to operate the parental controls, but data on parent devices is up for grabs.

The privacy policy states that this is included in the setup of the service on your device. We weren’t able to find this policy information on the general website after the profile was created.

Kaspersky Safe Kids security

As far as data encryption, we couldn’t find anything specific to the Safe Kids protection product. Kaspersky’s general encryption might apply, but we couldn’t find 100% verifiable info about encryption for the Safe Kids product.

Kaspersky Safe Kids alternatives

There may be aspects of Safe Kids that you aren’t in love with, and that’s okay. If Safe Kids isn’t for you, or you want to check out other great parental control apps, we’ve listed some alternatives.

Aura and Bark both focus more on personal safety, while McAfee is a cybersecurity-forward product. All offer protection for kids online.

• Bark: Bark’s sophisticated algorithms analyze texts, emails, and social media for signs of potential issues, including cyberbullying, violence, explicit content, and signs of self-harm. Timely alerts allow parents to discuss potential issues both off and online with their child. Bark’s far reach allows parents to help their children learn how to safely navigate the internet.
  
  Get Bark | Read Bark Review

• Aura Parental Controls: Aura Parental Controls features empower parents to set age-appropriate content filters, monitor screen time, and track online interactions. With real-time notifications and detailed activity reports, parents can stay informed about their children’s online behavior to help foster responsible internet usage.
  
  Get Aura Parental Controls | Read Aura Parental Controls Review

• McAfee: McAfee’s core focus has always been on security. The company also offers comprehensive parental control features to safeguard children’s online experiences. Advanced parental controls allow parents to effectively manage screen time, block inappropriate websites, and monitor social media interactions. The interface is user-friendly and allows for custom rules that align with a child’s age and interest.
  
  Get McAfee | Read McAfee Review

Kaspersky Safe Kids FAQs

Bottom line: Is Kaspersky Safe Kids worth it?

Yes, Kaspersky Safe Kids is definitely worth it. With the affordable yearly and renewal prices and features offered, parents will have more insight into their children’s online and offline activities.

We love that you can set physical parameters of where children are supposed to be and get real-time alerts on their location as well as the ability to monitor them online. The best way to teach kids to be self-sufficient online is by pointing out habits and ideas early, and Safe Kids gives parents the tools to do that.

4.3

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On Kaspersky Safe Kids's website

Kaspersky Safe Kids

• Parental control software that can monitor unlimited devices
• One user profile covers all kids
• iOS capabilities are limited

Author Details

Mary James

About the Author

Mary is a seasoned cybersecurity writer with over seven years of experience. With a B.S. in Liberal Arts from Clarion University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Point Park University, she educates audiences on scams, antivirus software, and more. Her passion lies in educating audiences on helpful ways to protect their data.