It's Your Computer--Let Us Help You Protect It

Wednesday, December 30, 2009, 11:41 am

The Internet has proven one of the most stunning innovations of the modern world. You can get information on almost any topic, from history, to current events, to weather, driving directions, movie times, and much, much more.

Unfortunately, the Internet, like most useful tools, has a dark side—pornography and exploitation. But just because the Internet can be misused or abused does not mean it's not a fantastically useful tool, or that it should be locked up or discarded. Used properly, the Internet makes all of our lives better.

In Australia some are proposing that ISPs (Internet Service Providers), mandated by the government, should bear the burden of protecting our children from the evils of the Internet. They propose that the ISPs block a list of offending websites.

While we applaud any sentiment that inspires people or agencies to try to protect our children, we at ContentWatch, makers of the best and best selling Internet parental control software available in the world, Net Nanny, think that responsibility resides, not with the government or the ISP, but with parents and citizens. Do you really want your ISP deciding what you can view or download onto YOUR computer?

Apart from the obvious issues of government censorship associated with this initiative, we believe it just won't be as effective as it could or should be. Why? Because solutions at the ISP or government level are easily hacked, worked around, or just plain ignored. Recent news reports tell of teenagers easily hacking free filtering software. ISP filtering is child's play for smart teenagers to work around. In fact, most desktop/client solutions are easily circumvented as well. (Not Net Nanny, of course.)

The best way to protect your family is to put parental control software on YOUR computer, so YOU can decide what to let in, and what to keep out. At the least, there should be a layered solution, combining some fairly obvious ISP filtering (blocking well-known egregious violators of public decency, for example) with a choice of desktop solutions that puts ultimate control in the hands of parents.

When the ISP or the government takes this responsibility on themselves, your personal rights are violated, your personal sovereignty is subverted, and, perhaps most importantly, it just isn't effective.

ISP filtering is not useless, but by itself, it falls short at too many important tasks, including the following:

ISP filtering by itself can not accomplish these important tasks:

• Filtering (not just blocking) anonymous proxies and local host proxies, the most common method for circumventing Internet filters
• Monitoring social networks, like Facebook and MySpace, including the chat functions
• Managing games and applications on the desktop.
• Filtering content based on AGE appropriateness
• ALLOWING access to sites that are mistakenly blocked
• Managing a child's TIME spent on the Internet
• Alerting parents when inappropriate sites are accessed
• Filtering, blocking, or monitoring a child's Instant Message CHAT sessions
• PROTECTING children from online predators and Cyberbullies.

ISP filtering alone fails to perform these important functions. Why? Because ISP filtering alone removes the parents from the process.

If you add a desktop solution, like Net Nanny, in addition to very limited and basic ISP filtering, you would accomplish ALL of the important functions a parental control software package should excel at, including everything in the list above, and much, much more. It monitors usage, blocks inappropriate content (based on ACTUAL content, not a generic list of websites), blocks or monitors Instant Message access, and protects YOUR family's privacy.

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