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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!
[July 2000 Editor's Update: We've just learned that ClickChoice, as an online-safety tool company, is now defunct. The company was recently acquired by Net Shepherd Inc., a Calgary-based technology company, which says it will discontinue the marketing and support of ClickChoice's "myFilter" software. The product launched just a little over six months ago! Here is the Net Shepherd/ClickChoice Web page on myFilter.]
Hybrid filtering: ClickChoice's myFilter (Jan. 7, '00 issue)
Filtering - whether to use it and what tools to use - is an individual family decision, but we always let you know when we hear about a tool we think is worth your consideration. Last fall we told you about a new breed of tool that really interested us: a "hybrid" one that blends technologies and human judgment in a way that makes the result more effective, easy to use, up-to-date, and customizable than filtering software that lives on a PC hard drive. PlanetGood was the product of this sort that we wrote up last fall. A new hybrid filtering product worth your consideration launches next week: myFilter.
What sets myFilter apart most is the fact that it's free. Starting Monday people can download it from the Web site of its maker, ClickChoice, after they've filled out a registration form. ClickChoice makes money by selling users' demographic and Web-surfing data to other companies (they assure us there is no abuse of users' privacy; data is sold only in aggregate - no personally identifiable information). PlanetGood, on the other hand, is sold to consumers through their Internet service providers for a small fee added to their monthly ISP bill.
The other differentiating feature is the way myFilter employs human judgment. Instead of actually employing its own people to rate Web sites, ClickChoice has teamed up with the Net Explorers Society, a "virtual community" of thousands of trained Web site raters throughout North America (and some other countries) founded and funded by a market research and consulting company called Net Shepherd, a strategic partner of ClickChoice. Net Shepherd explorer/raters receive "cash-redeemable points" for every set of ratings they submit. This feature alone is quite fascinating - a formula and business deal that could only work in the Internet Age.
The actual rating (of individual Web pages, not just home pages) is done by criteria quite similar to those used for movie and other public rating systems. Not much personal judgment is used; raters just look for pornography, profanity, pyrotechnics, hate, tobacco, alcohol, drugs, gambling, cult activity, and violence and rate pages accordingly. The home PC with myFilter installed blocks pages with ratings not appropriate to whatever version the individual is using, based on levels of maturity. MyFilter software offers passwords for each of four levels: adult+ (blocks nothing), adult (blocks pornography), teen, and child. ClickChoice's criteria for each category aren't disclosed in their Web site right now; we hope that'll change.
Though the rating system - including user levels and password - isn't particularly unique (see our PlanetGood review for another example), ClickChoice's partnership with the Net Explorer/raters community potentially gives it extraordinary coverage of the Web. ClickChoice says more than 100 million Web pages have been rated so far. By one fairly reliable measure that's nearly a third of publicly accessible Web pages (see our "How big is the Web?"). To increase that number, they have a "Rapid Response System" whereby whenever a user tries to access a site that hasn't been rated, its address is automatically forwarded to the Net Explorers community for review by at least three raters. ClickChoice says the response time is "a few minutes and usually less than an hour, 24 hours a day." The ever-growing database of rated pages is maintained on a server through which myFilter users are connected.
We think ClickChoice has been smart about its strategic partnering, which not only expands it human-review coverage of the ever-increasing number of Web pages out there, but also provides it with public awareness and product endorsement. Another strategic partner is the Safe America Foundation, whose site links to the myFilter download page.
If any of you try this product, we'd love to hear your comments on it.
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