CUJO Scares Away A New Kind of Predator

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The reviewer has been compensated in the form of a Best Buy Gift Card and/or received the product/service at a reduced price or for free. This post also contains affiliate links.

If you are a child of the 70s and 80s (like me) and you hear the name CUJO, you think of one thing and one thing only… a vicious, rabid dog!

The 1983 movie was based on the Stephen King book of the same name. I never read the book, despite being a Stephen King fan, and didn’t see the movie but the movie trailers must have haunted me all these years because I can’t forget that name.

It turns out that Cujo, of movie fame, was actual a rabid St. Bernard. I MEAN, who is afraid of a sweet lovable St. Bernard?

Side note: I was actually bitten by a St. Bernard but it was totally an accident. A story for another time…

But there’s a new CUJO in town and it could be just as vicious. Luckily, those attacks are being thwarted and not instigated by CUJO.

Although my IT department is currently housed in the dirty, dusty storage area of my basement, we like to think we’re pretty advanced. We have one of the latest and greatest routers with access points and encryption and everything else we might need for a strong but secure network. But we also have a 10 year old son.

A few years ago, my son got his hands on a laptop and became engrossed in games like Roblox and Minecraft. This inevitably led to the download of multiple files and viruses all in the name of “mods.” I can’t really blame him. At his young age, when something said click, he clicked! It wasn’t until mom and dad had to figure out what was wrong with his laptop that we realized how corrupted it was.

Then we gave the lecture about being careful about which websites and what downloads and prompted installed an anti-virus software on his computer. But that’s not the only way he’s connecting to the internet and it’s certainly not the only way the internet is connecting with us.

CUJO is a smart firewall device that designed to hook into your router and monitor any potential threats to any device on your network. CUJO detects and blocks malicious sites, viruses, and hacks. Think of it like antivirus for your entire network. Kind of like a one stop shop for your network protection.

With the CUJO app, you can then see every single device connected to your network and what potential threats have been attempted on each device. (To see these threats within the first few hours was a little alarming to say the least!).

If you’re like me, you probably think you’re pretty well under control with a computer, phone, and TV accessing the internet. I was pretty surprised to see that CUJO detected 43 devices in my house connected to the network.

Yep. Forty three, as in 4-3.

Phones, computers, Roku, wireless speakers, Amazon Echo, Vonage phone, Nest thermostat, Google Home, printers, tablets, iPod, Canary security, Xbox, and EVEN OUR REFRIGERATOR. It actually makes me feel better to see it all in one place and know what’s happening across our network.

But WAIT! There’s more!

As you’re reading about me putting a laptop into the hands of a 7 year old and hoping he doesn’t click on anything he’s not supposed to, you might consider me a fool.

Well, you’d be right. I didn’t grow up with so much access and I often don’t think about the incoming or outgoing threats.

Now that my son is 10, he’s a little more wise to the ways of the internet but that also means he’s a little more tech savvy.

With the CUJO app, you can set up profiles for each member of the family and associate each device with a specific member of the family. From there, you can whitelist and blacklist specific websites or entire web categories. You can monitor the amount of time spent online (on any device) and… get ready for it…

YOU CAN PAUSE THE INTERNET FOR THOSE ASSOCIATED DEVICES!

If your kids aren’t getting off the Xbox to do their homework or someone is just about to lose screen time, you don’t have to confiscate a thing. You can simply render a device useless!

It’s a little wrong that it’s my favorite feature but I have a feeling that just the threat of pausing the internet will be enough for a little peace and harmony in our house.

Worried that you can’t handle the tech of a device like CUJO? Watch me as I take (literally) minutes to set up the device on my entire network!