The Porn Detection Stick is the latest gadget from computer forensic firm Paraben. It connects to a computer via USB and conducts an automatic scan for pornographic content, before creating a report for the user.
The inbuilt software uses advanced image analyzing algorithms to indentify facial features, flesh tone colors, image back grounds and body part shapes that are potentially pornographic.
In addition to .jpg files, over 15 image formats are supported (PNG, RAS, TIFF, TIF, GIF, TGA, BMP, WBMP, JP2, JPC, ICO, PCX, WMF, PGX, DIB, and PNM). Once a scan has been completed, users can view the thumbnails in the 'Highly Suspect' folder and even remove them from the hard drive if desired.
The scanning software is also capable to detecting deleted images and Internet cache files, “so there's no hiding Internet activity’, explains the website. In other words, the Delete History button will no longer save you from prying eyes.
The Porn Detection Stick: does what it says on the tin.
The Porn Detection Stick leaves no trace on the target machine and requires no software to install. According to the Paraben website, the Porn Detection Stick can search a 500GB hard drive with over 70,000 images in just an hour and a half.
Paraben boasts that its software has a positive success rate of 99%. During an average scan, around 0.07% of images will be false positives. Curiously, this commonly includes pictures of babies, cardboard boxes and fruit.
The Porn Detection Stick retails for US$100 and is aimed primarily at business institutions, schools, parents, and churches (although we imagine quite a few susupicious spouses will be picking one up too). Currently, the Porn Stick is only capable of detecting images, but Paraben is working on an update that will also scan for pornographic videos.
For more information on the Porn Detection Stick, visit the Paraben website. In the meantime, it might be time to start shopping for a new computer...
