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!
Filtering by ISP (May 26, '00 issue)
As many of you know, families have a lot of online-safety options - Internet acceptable-use policies and family contracts, parental supervision, filtering software and services, monitoring software, desktop management "tools," and combinations of all of the above. (Reports on many of these are archived in the Net Family News site.)
This week let's give filtering a closer look. Generally, when people think of filtering the first thing that comes to mind is the "client-based" kind - software products installed on individual PCs. SafeKids.com's Larry Magid recently reviewed some of the most well-known filtering products, and there are many more listed in the searchable "tools" database at GetNetWise.org. There are positives and negatives that go with any software solution. The upside for client-based filtering, basically, is individual family control. Parents can research the blocking criteria various products use and pick the one with criteria and features that best fit their family's needs, then configure the software as they see fit. The downside is the fact that the software actually has to be installed, and updates are up to the customer.
That's why some families prefer to use filtered Internet service providers (called "server-based" filtering). Since the filtering software "lives" on the ISP's server, that's where the updating has to happen; the customer doesn't have to worry about software installation or updates. That's quite a plus for this option, if the ISP is doing a good job of updating its service and its servers are running all the time. Larry Magid this week reviewed one of these ISPs: FamilyClick.com. Another such service that we think will have broad appeal (because the company consciously steers clear of any particular political or religious agenda with its filtering criteria) is Dotsafe.com, which offers free filtering to any school in the United States (for details, please see our report on Dotsafe). For a useful roundup of many filtered ISPs, see an article in USAToday last year.
Of course there can be disadvantages to filtering ISPs, too, depending on the user. If parental involvement isn't part of a family's online-safety equation, one problem is that a tech-literate child could simply reconfigure the family modem to access a different (unfiltered) ISP - maybe that of a friend, covertly providing her own ISP account and password. The other is what critics call "centralized management" - the fact that one filtering system or set of criteria for blocking Web sites doesn't work for everybody. If you're considering the ISP option, check out the company's blocking criteria or at least its mission statement. It also helps to see if the service allows for any customization by the customer.
Beyond client- and server-based filtering there is one other category: what we call hybrid filtering, which puts software on both the ISP's server and the family's PC and also combines technologies. Three such options are myFilter and PlanetGood, both of which bring in the human factor (Web site screening by real people - what a concept!), and the BAIR Filtering System, which uses sophisticated artificial intelligence in the filtering process.
One other Web info resource parents should know about, if they'd like to see filtering in the context of other types of online-safety "tools," is the searchable database at GetNetWise.org, a nonprofit service in Washington supported by a number of large companies in the Internet indusry. We know of some products and services not in the database, but it's pretty comprehensive, nonetheless.
If any of you use a filtering ISP and are having either a great experience or second thoughts, please email us your comments via feedback@netfamilynews.org. Your insights can be helpful to many!
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