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Please note: The reports in this section are not product reviews or tests; they're meant to spotlight options for you to consider, as well as milestones in children's online-safety technology development. Comments from readers on their own experiences with these products and services are most welcome - and, with your permission, we publish them. Do email us your own product reviews anytime!
New online-safety tool for instant-messaging (March 23, '01)
One of you emailed us this week asking, "Is there some software that will keep a record of the IMs my children send and receive?" Thanks, Liz. It's a logical question that growing numbers of parents are probably asking. We did some research and found a brand-new software product that represents a very creative solution to instant-messaging users' safety concerns - though it doesn't do exactly what Liz's email appears to describe.
Besides loading up a PC's hard drive, recording all incoming and outgoing IM messages isn't possible right now because of the nature of the technology and the way the Internet works, Lonnie Parrish told us in a phone interview. Lonnie is senior software developer for Security Software Systems, Inc., makers of Cyber Sentinel filtering software. Several calls led us to Security Soft. Another call, to AOL, revealed that its Parental Controls have no IM-protection mechanism except restricting the Buddy List in "Privacy Preferences" or blocking a child's use of IM altogether.
Lonnie explained that IM makes it tough to create solutions because it's not "open standard" technology (unlike the World Wide Web, which is open-standard, explaining the proliferation of filtering products). Each instant-messaging provider - America Online, Microsoft Network, Yahoo!, etc. - has its own proprietary code and standard, making it very difficult for any software maker to make a product that monitors IM-ing using all standards.
But Security Soft has developed a new product - Predator Guard - that tackles the problem in another way. It scans all text on the computer screen, in any software program (Microsoft Word, Outlook Express, or any IM application), "notices" when that text could be threatening to the user's well-being, and ends the IM or chat session if the user tells it to. The software also captures and logs "violations" - messages that contain language a sexual predator would use - for use as evidence by law enforcement. Lonnie explained that there are two pieces to the product that allows it to do these things: 1) a "library" or database of about 250 terms and phrases typically used by sexual predators or pedophiles (e.g., "Are you home alone?") when they're trying to engage chatroom participants and 2) technology that monitors, detects, and logs that text, checking it against the database.
To develop its database of pedophile language, Security Soft worked with computer-crime experts in police departments for about two years, Lonnie told us. Besides picking the law-enforcement experts' brains, he said, his company went through thousands of chat logs that had been used as evidence in successful prosecutions of sex offenders, looking for patterns in how the offenders had gained victims' confidence.
Those are the features unique to Predator Guard. It also does what many other online-safety products do: monitors and blocks any personal information a child might send out, such as home address, phone number, email address, or school name. Security Soft also says it "works as a stand-alone application or with all existing filtering … (AOL Parental Controls, MSN, Cyber Patrol, Net Nanny, Cyber Snoop, Bess...) to fill the protection gap left by these programs."
[Editor's Note: We do not endorse any particular online-safety solution; we just report on what's available. Our position is that each family and school or district should be allowed to arrive at its own best solutions, technological or human. But if any of you like a particular solution - especially if you'd tried it! - we'd love to hear from you about it.]
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