Larry Magid at CNET reports:
Google has long allowed parents a SafeSearch filtering setting that keeps kids from using the search engine to find inappropriate sites like those with explicit sexual images or text. The problem was that kids could easily change those settings. Starting Wednesday, however, the company is allowing parents to lock those settings [...]
Filed under: Filtering, Internet Safety | 2 Comments »
Last week, a report by the United Nations released a jaw-dropping statistic, reported by the AP and elsewhere:
The number of Web sites containing child pornography is increasing and more images show serious abuses, a U.N. expert said Wednesday. More than 4 million Web sites worldwide show images of children being sexually exploited, said the U.N. [...]
Filed under: Filtering, Internet Safety, Policy | Leave a Comment »
Internet filtering is drawing a lot of controversy and attention right now in the international press as well as the blogosphere.
In the United States, Suren Ramasubbu writes on the Huffington Post that “Internet Filtering Software Makers Held to Higher Standard on Sharing User Data.” Ramasubbu expands on the EchoMetrix story to take on the issue [...]
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On Friday, the AP broke the story of parental control vendor Sentry using data gathered from children to create marketing data:
Parents who install a leading brand of software to monitor their kids’ online activities may be unwittingly allowing the company to read their children’s chat messages — and sell the marketing data gathered. Software sold [...]
Filed under: Filtering Companies, Internet Safety, Policy | 1 Comment »
Broadcasting & Cable gives a preview of the upcoming report on parental controls mandated by the Child Safe Viewing Act:
The FCC’s report to Congress on the state of media-screening technologies, due by the end of this month, comes to two broad conclusions, but does not suggest any action items beyond opening an inquiry prompted by [...]
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I’ve identified over 40 products marketed as parental controls. What I’ve found is that most Internet parental control products at their core are either filtering products that specialize in categorizing and blocking websites, or monitoring products that focus on creating a detailed record of Internet activity.
There are some really good filters out there – Cyber [...]
Filed under: Filtering | 1 Comment »
Saw this press release today from a company I hadn’t heard of before:
FlexiSPY Ltd has developed the only commercially available spy call software for iPhone, and is offering it in new versions of its FlexiSPY iPhone Spy Phone. FlexiSPY develops cutting-edge solutions for iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Nokia-Symbian that are widely used to supervise [...]
Filed under: Mobile Phones | 3 Comments »
A story in the BBC today picks up on a study from UK filtering vendor e-Safe education:
Data monitored from 30,000 students found content from items such as mobile phones and cameras which had not been picked up by filter systems. Researchers from online safety firm, E-Safe Education, say children are still able to access inappropriate [...]
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A broad industry coalition called PointSmart.ClickSafe has just issued a Task Force Recommendations for best practices for child online safety. This is a solid report that repeats earlier calls for more education, and for the first time lays out some much needed Internet industry standards. This is a real step forward. Adam Thierer at the [...]
Filed under: Filtering, Policy | 3 Comments »
In order to manage Internet access in the more complex world of Web 2.0, parents are increasingly turning to monitoring software, often in combination with filtering software ( a recent survey found that 27% of European parents use both filtering and monitoring software). Spector Pro is often considered the best total monitoring package. As this [...]
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