Choices for parents who want to install parental controls on Linux computers have historically been pretty thin. Fortunately, that seems to have changed. Tech Radar has a great comparison of six different Linux parental controls. Most of these are free tools, but for the seriously techie parent only: It’s difficult to name the winner of [...]
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The long struggle for an official .XXX domain to host adult websites is finally over, as ICANN today announced: The agency that controls Internet addresses said Friday it will consider adding the .xxx suffix for pornography to the list that people and companies can pick for their online identities. The decision paves the way for [...]
Filed under: Filtering | 3 Comments »
I’ve been following the case Bradburn v. North Central Regional Library District since it was filed on Nov 11, 2006, in Washington Eastern District Court. The case involves patrons of the North Central Regional Library e suing the library over the library’s Internet policy, which filters access for adults. The plaintiffs seek to order the [...]
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Traditionally, Internet parental control products have been at their core either filtering products that offer specialized categories of websites for filtering, or monitoring products that focus on creating a detailed record of Internet activity. With the profusion of “Web 2.0” technologies, many parental controls vendors are realizing they need to improve their monitoring abilities to [...]
Filed under: Filtering, Filtering Companies, Products, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »
From CNET: The browser relies on Mobicip’s servers to filter inappropriate URLs and search results. Parents can choose from three predefined filtering levels: elementary, middle, and high school. If you want more granular control, consider signing up for a Premium account, which for $9.99 annually lets you blacklist/whitelist specific sites, block specific categories (chat, shopping, [...]
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A new survey by the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital and the University of Michigan Child Health Evaluation and Research finds that about half of US parents use Internet parental control software. A June, 2009 survey found 55% use them, and 2005 Pew survey recorded 55%. What’s new is the rise in the use of monitoring [...]
Filed under: Filtering, Internet Safety | 1 Comment »
Larry Magid at CNET reports: Google has long allowed parents a SafeSearch filtering setting that keeps kids from using the search engine to find inappropriate sites like those with explicit sexual images or text. The problem was that kids could easily change those settings. Starting Wednesday, however, the company is allowing parents to lock those [...]
Filed under: Filtering, Internet Safety | 3 Comments »
Last week, a report by the United Nations released a jaw-dropping statistic, reported by the AP and elsewhere: The number of Web sites containing child pornography is increasing and more images show serious abuses, a U.N. expert said Wednesday. More than 4 million Web sites worldwide show images of children being sexually exploited, said the [...]
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Internet filtering is drawing a lot of controversy and attention right now in the international press as well as the blogosphere. In the United States, Suren Ramasubbu writes on the Huffington Post that “Internet Filtering Software Makers Held to Higher Standard on Sharing User Data.” Ramasubbu expands on the EchoMetrix story to take on the [...]
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On Friday, the AP broke the story of parental control vendor Sentry using data gathered from children to create marketing data: Parents who install a leading brand of software to monitor their kids’ online activities may be unwittingly allowing the company to read their children’s chat messages — and sell the marketing data gathered. Software [...]
Filed under: Filtering Companies, Internet Safety, Policy | 1 Comment »
