Net Nanny's long history means extensive surveillance capabilities that have evolved over decades—and multiple corporate owners. Now owned by Bark Technologies, the product combines legacy content filtering with modern monitoring features. What's unclear is what happened to data collected under previous owners and how current data practices align across the corporate portfolio.
| Data Type | Collected | Shared | Sold |
|---|---|---|---|
| Browsing History | Complete URLs | Parents, Analytics | No |
| Search Queries | All searches | Content filtering | Aggregated research |
| App Usage | Detailed logs | Parents | No |
| Screen Time | Per-app tracking | Parents, Analytics | No |
| Blocked Content | All attempts | Filtering algorithms | Content research |
Net Nanny has changed owners multiple times (ContentWatch, Zift, now Bark Technologies). Each transition raises questions about data handling continuity, what happened to historical data, and how policies evolved across owners.
Every URL visited, search query entered, and blocked site attempted is logged. This creates comprehensive records of children's internet curiosity, questions, and interests—often more revealing than what they actually access.
Blocked content attempts are particularly sensitive—revealing what children tried to access but couldn't. This data about curiosity and boundary-testing is collected and potentially used for algorithm training.
Software that's been around since the 1990s accumulated data under very different privacy standards. Current policies don't adequately address what happened to decades of historical surveillance data.
Decades of content categorization means generally accurate filtering without over-relying on AI analysis of children's communications.