Unfortunately, as recent US court cases have demonstrated, many of the censorware companies are less than open about their products and will actively prosecute (and even persecute) people who reverse engineer their products to discover exactly what they do.
The censorware companies maintain that there is an overwhelming need to keep the programs simple, presumably so that the computer illiterate masses dont get too uncomfortable with the technology. This justifies dumbing down the parental controls to only specify the categories of sites which will be blocked without needing to worry about the details. Aftab strongly disagrees with this approach as parents and families need to be able to choose what content is appropriate based upon their own values rather than the values of censorware companies.
Both Norton Internet Security and CyberPatrol have adopted this philosophy in their software. If you want to check what CyberPatrol is blocking, you need to go to the CyberPatrol Web site (www.cyberpatrol.com), access the CyberNOT search engine, then manually enter the site URL to obtain a report as to why it was blocked. During our tests, the CyberNOT search engine failed to report several sites such as www.sex.com as being blocked, despite the software actually blocking the sites in question!
Even if the CyberNOT search engine worked properly, and you found sites where you disagreed with CyberPatrols judgement, you would then have to manually unblock each site from within the CyberPatrol HQ. Is this really easier than allowing parents access to the blacklist in the first place?
Norton Internet Security is even worse in that there is no obvious way in which a parent can even find out if a site has been blocked. The only time that parents find out that a site is blocked is when the software displays the block message while surfing. This trust us approach is of great concern, particularly since some sites such as the anti-censorship site Peacefire.org is blocked for what appears to be political motives. Few people would agree that anti-censorship information amounts to a crime. Despite assurances from Ben Gurthie at Symantec Asia-Pacific that there are no default blocks on legitimate e-commerce sites, our tests found that sites such as Victorias Secret, which sells womens underwear, were blocked because of their alleged sexual allure.
Unfortunately, the main problem with these packages, such as Norton and CyberPatrol, is that the blocking lists very quickly become out of date. This means that for the programs to remain effective, the blocking lists need to be updated quite regularly. Since the cost of maintaining these lists is very high, users have to pay for their update subscriptions, which adds a hidden cost to the software. Despite these organisations employing large teams to constantly update the lists, the programs are never 100 per cent effective against blocking sites and undesirable content does slip through.
To overcome this problem, some packages such as Net Nanny use both a blocking list and keyword list, which blocks sites that either appear on the list or contain the banned keywords. Net Nanny is also quite different in its philosophy in that the banned site list is readily accessible by parents and updates are provided free of charge. However, the existing version of the software is not as effective as some of the other packages since it only monitors specific applications rather than the Internet connection. This means that you would need to register every Internet application (eg. Outlook, Outlook Express) for Net Nanny to be effective.
Unlike the previous products, ifilter (www.ifilter.com.au) works by connecting you to an ifilter proxy server that performs the blocking rather than storing the blocking lists on your computer. Blocking list updates are automatically sent to the proxy server thus ensuring that the lists remain current without the user manually downloading updates. Unfortunately, ifilter does not fully disclose how its filtering system works nor are the blocking lists made public, which, again, means that the only time you will know that a site is blocked is when access is denied. We found that many legitimate e-business sites were blocked if they sold underwear (womens but surprisingly not mens) as were any sites that contained banned words (eg. weed killer because it contained the word weed).
One of the more experimental filters is Eye Guard, by Eye-T Technologies. Still in development, Eye Guard claims to be able to find pornography by using artificial intelligence to detect pornographic images based upon skin tones, body part shape and texture.
The price for these products varies depending upon whether you purchase downloadable versions via the Internet or the packaged product from computer shops. Expect to pay $US54 for Norton Internet, $US29.95 for CyberPatrol or $9.95 if you are an OzEmail customer. Many ISPs bundle filters such as Net Nanny at no extra charge whereas ifilter can be downloaded for free from www.ifilter.com.au.
Censoware beware
The legal basis for Internet censorship
The censorware debate
Exposing how these products work
What can you do if your site is blacklisted?
Future policies and directions