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ICRAplus: Making sense for parentsReaders' comments on any of these resources are always welcome! Do email us via feedback@netfamilynews.org.Now they're talking! The Internet Content Rating Association has just released ICRAplus, a filtering step forward that makes a lot more sense for parents than did ICRAfilter, ICRA's first product for home PCs.
"It's a step forward in that, whereas ICRAfilter was wholly dependent upon the presence of labels or the parent's own block or allow lists, ICRAplus takes those basics but also allows for the easy addition of other filtering tools that are either in the marketplace as commercial products or noncommercial products offered by nonprofit organizations," Stephen Balkam, ICRA's CEO, told us in a phone interview. He said the arrival of ICRAplus finally ends the chicken 'n' egg conundrum ICRA faced whereby "not many people use ICRAfilter because not enough sites are [voluntarily] labeled and not enough sites are labeled because not enough people are using ICRAfilter."
A quick look at its basic features: ICRAplus...
- Reads ICRA labels, of course (Web site publishers' voluntary labeling/rating content for sex, nudity, profanity, violence, gambling, alcohol, drugs, and chatrooms).
- Supports other filtering/blocking software, including a growing list of ICRA partners.
- Supports parents' and other independent parties' block and/or allow Web site lists.
- Is free (though the filtering software it works with isn't always).
Cutting right to the effectiveness question: The answer lies in what you use with the basic ICRAplus download. Stephen points to ICRA's first two filtering partners, Optenet and FilterX. "If you went with those, either of the two would greatly increase your safety levels. If you took both you would probably have one of the strongest and safest filters available." Stephen added that "of course standards bodies will be testing" ICRAplus, and the German government is testing it right now (we'll let you know results soon as we hear).Optenet and FilterX represent different filtering technologies, Stephen said. "FilterX is an artificial intelligence agent that assesses a site for sexual content [before it downloads]. Optenet has text analysis [English, German, and other languages] but also a very large URL block list updated frequently. It then presents labels that map back to ICRA's labeling system" and block according to parental preferences. Though they're European companies, their technologies are just as useful to families in other parts of the world, particularly English and European language speakers. Both products, which can be downloaded right from the ICRA site come with a free trial and cost 39 euros (about $48). A third noncommercial partner, Jugenschutzprogramm.de, also downloadable from ICRA.org, filters German-language sites (for free) based on its own URL-blocking list.
Stephen says ICRAplus also "potentially works with any other product," Net Nanny, CyberSentinel, etc. - whether or not it appears on ICRA's site, without changes to the products. "We're an open church," he said. ICRAplus ultimately is meant to be a user-friendly interface-plus that pulls all the online-safety options together for parents and adds the content-rating feature.
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