Net Family News: Online-Safe Resources for Kids and Families

Online-Safe Resources for Home & School

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!

Online safety: The browser option (April 7, '00 issue)

This week we put on our trend-monitoring hat to report to you on another major milestone we're seeing in kids' online safety. Thus far parents' options have included:

Client-based tools (filtering, monitoring, and time-out software on computers at home)
Server-based filtering (filtering done on servers at Internet service providers)
Hybrid client/server filtering (filtering that "lives" on both the home PC and the ISP's servers)

Next on the list are what you might call "super browsers" - software that combines the browsing technology of a Navigator or Explorer with filtering and other online-safety and -privacy features. This software is also a next-generation safety tool because, in addition to Web content, it's addressing the Internet communications tools kids love to use - email, instant messaging, chat, discussion boards. That's important because there's as much potential danger to kids in Web communications as there is in Web content.
Two products have come to our attention this past week: Activator Desk and Safexplorer.

Activator Desk: 'Turbo-charged' browser
Designed by software engineer Roger Heath, who has spent most of his career designing supremely simple software solutions for emergency medicine, Activator Desk is meant to be a no-nonsense, technically sophisticated browser + computer desktop that's easy on the hard drive (at around 4 MB, it fits on a few floppy disks).
What made him go down the browser road? "I wanted to have a browser that's fun to use for me…. I'd always been disappointed in the browser technology that was out there. Netscape and Explorer were not that different from the original Mosaic. I ran a small ISP here [in Tulsa, Okla.], mostly for entertainment, and I noticed that connecting to the Internet was too hard. So I designed a one-click dialup, one-click disconnect program. Once I'd finished that, I began to look at the browser side." He began working on Activator Desk about two years ago.
A version of it is available for downloading now, but Version 5, scheduled for launch in the next "30-60 days" (we'll let you know), is the one parents will want to wait for. [That's PC-owning parents; unfortunately, a Macintosh version is unlikely.]
Activator Desk is a very flexible piece of software. In terms of online safety, it includes both keyword filtering and a "white list" database of 6,000 Web sites deemed safe for kids (e.g., no sexually explicit, hate-related, or violence-promoting content). All filtering criteria, as well as all sites listed in the database, are available to parents, and sites can be added or deleted. Even whole bookmark collections - for example a teacher's assigned sites for a particular unit - can be imported. The company's own updates to the database can be downloaded anytime from the server, but if a parent wants to give a teenager filtered access to the entire Web, the database-only function can be turned off (keyword filtering can be turned off, too). Free-email sites (e.g., Hotmail or Email.com), instant messaging, chat functions, and/or discussion board functions can all be turned off, together or individually. All activity of any user that is allowed - Web sites visited as well as software programs used - can be monitored.
Activator also includes a time-out function for computer use or online time (or both). Roger tells us, "You could even restrict the use of offline games - Doom, for example - till 8 p.m., at which time productive, 'homework' programs only are permitted." Educators and multilingual families will appreciate the "Translate" button that links users directly to AltaVista's translation page.
All functions can be configured for individual family members. Each has his or her own "account" and password (unlimited number of accounts are possible, but the home-use license allows for database use by six networked computers, max). The three basic settings are preschoolers, kids/teens, and adults; all can be customized. Each user can design the look and feel of his own desktop. Of course, this product will also be attractive to schools and corporations that want to control computer and Internet use.
There are or will be some significant privacy features in Activator, too. Web advertisers won't be happy if this product becomes popular because it can turn off third-party banner ads, and the "cookies" they send (tracking your surfing patterns) can be turned off - the kind of banner ads and cookies that Internet ad companies like DoubleClick place in major news and health-related sites (see our report "Health sites' privacy flaw"). Roger says a later version will also be able to screen outgoing data such as credit card numbers, addresses, and phone numbers.
We asked Roger why he thinks his product is better than filtering ISPs, for which he expressed some (not unsurprising) disdain. The obvious problem, he says, with server-based filtering (or "centralized management," as he calls it) is the fact that a child can simply put a different ISP account - for example, one that a schoolmate might have covertly provided - into his modem and use an unfiltered Internet service without Mom and Dad ever knowing. Besides, "I just laugh at centralized management," Roger told us, "because you lose the individualization. It's impossible for one system to cater to everybody's needs. It's much better when people control their own experience rather than handing control to a third party. Anyway, the server could go down!"

Safexplorer: Beyond filtering
Safexplorer, available right now, was designed even more with kids in mind. It too is flexible and has many of the same features as Activator (more on those in a moment). What stands out to us is the fact that Safexplorer Software Corp. has 12 full-time employees - teachers, reference librarians, and other child-oriented professionals - screening and adding 900 new "safe" Web sites to their 4,500-site database a week. The criteria they use in the screening process are:

"Sites must have educational or entertainment value. Educational value is based on the criteria and the organization established by the National Education Teaching Standards of America.
"Sites may have a commercial component only if they offer a significant amount of educational or entertainment material.
"Sites must be composed of original content and not rely heavily on referring links.
"Sites may not contain bad language, prejudiced or hate messages, pornographic or sexual content or depict violence."

The software includes keyword filtering as well as the database option (disallowing access to any site not on the white list) presented in a Yahoo!-like directory; separate, customizable settings for ages 3-5 (includes profanity filter, for example), 6-12, 13-17, and 18+ and up to 10 passworded accounts; a time-out setting for online time; look-'n'-feel customizing by each family member; Web-activity monitoring; and a firewall feature to be added later this spring.
Monitoring in Safexplorer is fairly family-oriented. If a child tries to go to a site not in the database, such as Playboy.com, the monitoring function records even the attempt. That record can be printed out for a parent-child discussion. In our interview, CEO Patrick Earle called it their "discussion paper" feature.
One key difference between Safexplorer and Activator is that the latter replaces, actually supersedes, other browsers. It won't allow Explorer or Netscape to run (though Roger says it includes all their features and then some). With Safexplorer, Netscape or Explorer loyalists are indulged (a grownup user might use Netscape, while a child is allowed only Safexplorer browsing). Also, Safexplorer is definitely "fatter" - 25 MB for Windows 95, 15 MB for 98, and 10 MB for Windows 2000.
We'd love to hear from you if you try versions of either of these products. Tell us what you do or don't like about them - via feedback@netfamilynews.org.

Please type a question and click "Ask!"
For example: "Why is the sky blue?"

Powered by Ask Jeeves technology