Filtering Facts

Websense has traditionally been the leader in enterprise filtering, with a robust product that usually scores well in product reviews and is especially good at blocking pornography.   But parents haven’t had much access to Websense’s  filtering as the company has never (except for some sales to ISPs in the 1990s) offered its product to home users.

Now some former Websense managers have started up an Internet security solutions provider called Total Tech.  Their product offering is called Livia Web Protection, and it’s basically Websense’s filtering “in the cloud” – i.e., with the filtering done on remote servers rather than on your desktop.  This is a good thing, because filtering databases have become too large and are updated too frequently now to be practical running on individual desktops as they were in the 1990s. 

Installation and Setup
Livia Web Protection isn’t completely in the cloud, as it does require you to download and install a lightweight client on each desktop. The installation was extremely simple – it automatically started filtering on “Basic” level after a few minutes.  The interface is intuitive and easy-to-use, but is very minimal on features and settings.  The company stated that  additional settings and functionality based on customer feedback will be available in upcoming versions.  There are three settings – “Basic”, which filters pornography, nudity, and malicious or criminal websites, and proxies; “Restrictive,” which filters riskier sites for children such as social networking, sex education, dating, lingerie, etc.; and “Monitor Only”, which generates nice reports of web usage.

Filtering Effectiveness
I decided to test on “Basic” by throwing a bunch of  porn sites at it, as well as some tricks to try and circumvent the filter, and I was in for some pleasant surprises.  First, I generated a list of 100 porn sites using Google, Yahoo, Live, and AltaVista – Livia blocked them all!  Then I tried to circumvent Livia by resolving a couple of adult website names into numeric IP addresses and entering them in the browser, but Livia was on to this trick.  Next I tried about a dozen public anonymous proxies, but Livia blocked them all.  Then tried a couple of language translators at Google and AltaVista, and found they weren’t blocked, so I tried to use them to access adult sites, but Livia intercepted the URL and blocked it.  The same was true of Archive.org, which has a large amount of pornography.  This is a really nice feature that I haven’t seen anywhere else before, as it allows the use of language translators and the Internet Archive without opening up a gaping proxy hole in your filtering.   Finally I went to a couple of image search engines, and found that Livia blocks the images of filtered sites only. This is another great feature as it gets around the “all or nothing” approach to image search engines, which kids love but are a frequent source of exposure to inappropriate images.  But here a little porn slipped through – out of 100 graphic images, 4 showed up as thumbnails, but the sites were inaccessible.

I finally found a hole in the filtering when I went to Flickr.com, which is not blocked in “Basic” mode, and the extensive library of adult images on Flickr were fully accessible.  Flickr and other photo sharing and social networking sites are blocked in the “Restrictive” setting, but you can’t add Flickr to your personal list of blocked sites because Livia doesn’t offer that feature yet.

Monitoring and Reporting
Livia also offers really nice reporting that categorizes web usage, both blocked and allowed.  You can click on any of the categories and see exactly what was blocked. This is a good option for monitoring older children.

Pros:

• Outstanding filtering. This is about the best quality filtering I’ve seen, blocking everything in my test sample.  I had to work really hard to find anything that wasn’t blocked.
• No updates necessary. A big problem with many home filters is they require updates to the filtering list. By putting the filtering in the cloud, this isn’t a problem.
• Good monitoring and reporting. Very simple and informative.  The non-blocked categorization is a nice feature that I don’t think anyone else offers.
• Extremely simple setup and no maintenance.

Cons:

• Only protects from web content. If your child uses e-mail, IM, etc. You’ll need other tools to go along with Livia. The company said they plan on  adding application management features in upcoming Livia versions.
• Limited setting functionality. There are only three settings, and no ability to customize the filtering by adding or deleting your own sites.  Again, the company said future versions will include more setting customization based on customer feedback.
• A small, but noticeable latency. Because Livia has to connect to remote proxy servers, I did notice a small delay at times in accessing websites.

Verdict: 
For the parent who wants to have secure and robust filtering or monitoring in the home, this is definitely worth the $4.95 per month.  If what you are most concerned about is blocking adult content from your family, this is the product for you.   A free 14-day trial is available at http://www.liviaweb.com