GetParentalControls.org

Monitoring software that reveals what sort of content is being access on a computer is a valuable addition to filtering software.  Parents, spouses, and employers often have reasons for wanting to check up on how their computers are being used.  However, one of the problems with monitoring software is that unless it’s done through the network, you have to download, install, and configure the software on the suspect computer.  SurfRecon offers a neat solution by packing its software on to a USB thumb drive you can easily slide in -and out of – almost any Windows, Mac, or Linux computer with a USB port.  

SurfRecon isn’t to be confused with the sophisticated monitoring suites offered by Websense or Secure Computing that offer granular web access reports across dozens of categories.  SurfRecon doesn’t categorize websites, only images, and only in four categories: Child Pornography, Sexual, Safe, and Unknown.  However, I found that after two week of testing on various computers, SurfRecon performs its function pretty well. 

Installation and Use
Firing up SurfRecon could be a little more automated, but once you’ve used it a couple of times, it usually takes less than a minute from the time you insert SurRecon in the USB before you’re scanning images.    After you’ve logged in to your SurfRecon account, you can scan the images in the browser cache, individual directories, or the entire hard drive, including deleted files.   

Once you’ve selected the scope of your search, SurfRecon starts to work.  You will immediately see blurred thumbnails of images appearing on the screen.  You can adjust the blurring level from no blurring to very heavy blurring.   You can also peer through a portion of the blurred images with SurfRecon’s “Digital Keyhole.”   This is a really nice feature for someone who cringes at the thought of a screen full of porn popping up on them.

I found the search times for SurfRecon varied widely depending on a number factors, such as whether you installed SurfRecon directly to your computer or ran it off the thumbdrive;  the scope of the search you conducted; the number of images on the drive; and the speed of the hardware.  In my testing, a complete search on a fast quad-core PC with 4 GB of RAM searching only the browser cache took about 15 minutes.  A full search conducted from SurfRecon’s thumbdrive  of the entire hard drive of an older machine took over 2 hours. 

Image Reporting Accuracy
When SurfRecon locates an image file, SurfRecon creates a “hash” for the image.  (A hash is basically a digital fingerprint of an image represented as a unique number).  SurfRecon then matches the hash against the International Forensics Image Database (IFID) of over 250 5 million images to see if the corresponding image has already been categorized. 

The child pornography images are added by law enforcement, while the “Sexual” images are images corresponding to known pornography sites.  I only evaluated the “Sexual” image categorization and not the “Child Pornography” because investigating child pornography should be left to law enforcement professionals.  I tested the accuracy of the “Sexual” category by clearing out my cache, then browsing some adult sites,  some swimsuit and lingerie sites, adult images in the Google cache, and some of the adult portions of the Flickr photo sharing site.

SurfRecon found 1,190 images in my browser cache.  It classified them like this:
781         Unknown
237         Safe
172         Sexual
0              Child Pornography 

The “Safe” category was entirely accurate – there were no adult images here.  The “Unknown” category contained 56 adult images, nearly all of which were from the Google Cache or from Flickr.   The “Sexual” category contained about 40 images that were clearly non-pornographic.  Since SurfRecon reports images linked to known adult sites as “Sexual,” I surmised these were navigational and “helper” images, which SurfRecon confirmed.  The “Sexual” category also contained some (but not all) of the lingerie and switsuit site images.  SurfRecon’s user guide states that the “Sexual” category is intentionally broad, and admits that most of these images are added by automatic webcrawlers. 

While SurfRecon’s error rate would be unacceptable for filtering software, the system works well enough for its intended function – to let someone determine if adult content is being accessed on a computer. 

Cost:
Software only, 1-year subscription: $19.5; Thumbdrive, 1-year subscription: $39.95 

System Requirements:
A computer must have at least 128 MB of memory, the ability to run Java, a functioning USB port (if SurfRecon is run from a thumb drive), and one of the following operating systems:  Windows 95; Windows 98; Windows 2000; Windows ME; Windows XP; Windows Vista; Apple OS X; Linux (version 2.4 and greater of any mainstream distribution). 

Pros:

• Thumbdrive form factor makes an ideal tool for quick, small footprint monitoring of individual PCs.
• Easy to use interface, very short learning curve.
• Categorization of adult sites works well enough to quickly determine if adult content is being accessed.

 Cons:

• Simple reports are OK, but more reporting options would be an improvement.
• Limited number of categories.
• Complete hard drive searches can take a long time on some systems.

 Bottom Line:

While SurfRecon is not a substitute for filtering or full-featured monitoring software, it does a good job at its function of quickly and easily checking a computer for sexual content.