The survey found high levels of involvement from both samples, including a whopping 85 percent using “parental controls for TV, computers, web browsers.”  According to the survey’s author, the digitally savvy moms were slightly less likely to use parental controls, but both used them at very high levels. 

Other surveys have found lower rates of adoption for parental controls by parents, typically in the 50-60 percent range.  However, these earlier studies focused only on Internet use, while this study focused on both computers and TV.  Further, as Adam Theier has repeatedly pointed out, surveys of parental control adoption often underrepresent use because they include parents with very young our grown children who have less of a need for parental controls. 

Add this study to the emerging body of evidence that parents with school-age children are very interested in parental controls, and use them in overwhelming numbers.

What I find interesting about this idea is that in the worlds of online privacy and online security — the technological/social problems that are the most similar to online safety – there is no such “education is better than technology” debate.  No one seriously argues that we can best address spam, hacking, privacy, or malware only with “education” – it’s a given that technology is part of the solution. Anti-spam software is part of the solution to spam, anonymizers and privacy settings are part of the solution to privacy, etc. 

That said, security professionals will tell you that technology alone cannot solve security problems, and that user education must be part of any comprehensive security solution.  If users aren’t educated in how to recognize fake e-mails with links to malicious websites, a defense-in-depth solution of anti-spam, filters, firewalls, and anti-malware software will eventually fail when something inevitably slips through and a user clicks on a malicious link and downloads malware. 

I find it hard to understand why anyone would think that the problems of online safety – exposure to inappropriate content, cyberbullying, online sexual solicitation, sexting, etc. can be addressed only with education. 

An “education only” approach to the problem of inappropriate online content is like inviting your child into the world’s largest magazine store where Hustler is next to Highlights, then relying on instructions on how not to look at Hustler to prevent exposure.  Wouldn’t it make a little more sense to also put Hustler in the Adults Only section?  

When seeking to protect children from sexual solicitation, of course we need to educate kids on how to stay out of shady neighborhoods – online and offline – but doesn’t make it sense to restrict the access of kids to online neighborhoods like Chatroulette, where 14 percent of users are exposers? 

So what’s the answer: education or technology?  Of course, the answer is both.  The “education vs. technology” online safety debate is a false dilemma.  We shouldn’t be discussing which approach to use, but rather what’s the best way to use education and technology together effectively. Technological/social problems like security, safety and privacy need combined education and technology solutions to be most effective.  It’s long past time to move beyond the unproductive “technology vs. education” debate. 

–David Burt, CISSP, CIPP

SpectorSoft isn’t the only parental control vendor to use this advertising approach.   Taser markets a mobile phone parental control product called Protector.  The Protector website currently displays a banner ad with another image of a demented criminal and the text,  “Would you let him hang out in your kids room?”

I’ve never been shy about pointing out the dangers to kids on the Internet – my testimony on the topic before Congress was cited by the US Supreme Court in 2003.  Parents do need to be aware of the real risk children face when the go online.  According to some of the best available research:

• 20% of U.S. students ages 10-18 report experiencing cyberbullying at some time, defined as “when someone repeatedly harasses, mistreats, or makes fun of another person online or while using cell phones or other electronic devices.” (Cyberbullying Research Center, 2010)
• 42% of youth reported some form of exposure to pornographic content. Of those youth who report exposure, 66% say it was unwanted. (Pediatrics, 2006)
• 14% of youth received sexual solicitations online (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 2006)

These are serious statistics that rightfully concern parents, and are all good reasons for adopting safety education, safety rules, and parental controls.  But the risk of children being stalked in the offline world by predators is in reality small. In 2006, U.S. law enforcement agencies made 615 arrests for Internet-initiated sex crimes involving youth victims. (Crimes Against Children Research Center, 2006).  Of course that’s 615 cases too many, and law enforcement should be doing everything it can to track down these predators.  

But it’s still a small number compared to the millions of children being harassed and exposed to X-rated content online.  Online safety educators and parental control companies do parents a better service by presenting parents with a realistic view of risks, and presenting realistic solutions. 

–David Burt, CISSP, CIPP

 It’s difficult to name the winner of this Roundup a tool that few people use – fewer than the numbers rallying behind DansGuardian, at least. Unfortunately, an alarming number of false positives on the default configuration make it only the last of the podium finishers. Considering that WebCleaner and Privoxy are both nearly perfect in their default configuration, it seems unfair to guide home users and concerned parents to the relative complexity of DansGuardian, which requires the configuration of a separate proxy.

FoxFilter is the most surprising member of the list for many reasons, but primarily because it’s a Firefox extension. None of the other tools in the list are bound to a browser except for Gnome Nanny, which only supports Firefox, Epiphany and Konqueror, which means that Chrome users are forced to ignore it.  So, despite showing promise, it can only muster a 5 on our rating, which is neither here nor there. Plus, pages render very slowly while it inspects them, and this is quite a dampener too.

Now we come to one of the more complex tools – SquidSafe. In our initial assessment we considered SquidSafe a potential winner. It soon fell out of the running though because of WebCleaner, which stole the second spot from SquidSafe, which had until then seemed like a certainty. There’s a bunch of things wrong with SquidSafe, but the most appalling of is the fact that for certain types of filters you need to create files from scratch while others can be managed from the interface, yet the documentation makes no mention of how to decide between the two competing methods.

However, Gnome Nanny, a desktop parental control system with a slick GUI that can within minutes be set up to keep away objectionable content, may upset the playing field. But that’s still a somewhat distant dream, since Gnome Nanny falls severely short. It can’t filter out keywords, it can’t import blacklists unless they’re in the Nanny format, there’s no documentation, and although the blogosphere is excited, there doesn’t seem to be a flurry of movement to produce a quality product that will have everyone from the manager of a busy librarian to harassed parents itching to try it out.

 Ultimately, it’s only Privoxy with its easy to remember + and – signs and heavy reliance on regular expressions that wins. It ensures that only the safest and the most harmless of content makes its way to you, so it wins the day without even breaking a sweat.

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 final approval to launch .xxx as an online red light disctrict, alongside suffixes such as .com and .org, in as soon as six months, finally ending a decade-long battle.

The new suffix would not be required for pornographic sites, but backers say it will make it easy for Web blocking software to filter out “.xxx” sites, marking them clearly as porn.

Unfortunately, this isn’t true.    The idea sounds compelling: you put all the pornography in the .XXX domain, then you just set web browsers or filters to block all .XXX, and the problem is solved.  Unfortunately, it’s not that simple, and .XXX won’t work to make filters more effective. 

The reason .XXX won’t work is because of the technology that underlies the Internet.  As many Internet users know, underneath the familiar Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) of www.SiteName.com is a unique Internet Protocol (IP) number like 192.168.1.1.  

Here’s where the problem with blocking only .XXX name comes in.  If a web site like www.playboy.com corresponds directly with a numeric IP such as 216.163.137.68, the filter must block the numeric IP and the FQDN to be effective.  [Of course, some websites do not correspond directly to a single numeric IP, but rather share a numeric IP with multiple websites.  In these cases it is usually not necessary to block the numeric IP address.]

If the numeric IP is not blocked, it becomes trivial for a knowledgeable teen to defeat filtering.  There are many websites on the Internet that for free will translate .com names into numeric IP address.  For example, visit http://centralops.net/co/DomainDossier.aspx  and enter WWW.PLAYBOY.COM and it returns 216.163.137.68.  Enter 216.163.137.68 into a browser, and you can access Playboy.  (Alternatively, you can just drop down to a command prompt in Windows and type in “Ping playboy.com” to get the numeric IP) 

For filtering companies, the bottom line is that .XXX won’t make their jobs any easier.  Filtering companies can’t just block all .XXX sites, because in addition to blocking www.porn-site.xxx they will have to block the numeric IP as well.  And that means tracking each .XXX porn site individually to find the numeric IP address, the same way filtering companies track .com porn sites.  And that’s a big job.  The big filtering companies have millions of pornography sites to keep track of.  So rather than making the jobs of filtering companies easier, the main impact a .XXX will have for filtering companies is to simply create more pornography sites for them to filter.

 On September 30, Judge Shea granted motions for summary judgment, but held his ruling in abeyance pending certification of questions of Washington State Constitutional law before the Washington State Supreme Court.

The Washington State Supreme Court just ruled today, full ruling here:

“We conclude that a library can, subject to the limitations set forth in this opinion, filter Internet access for all patrons, including adults, without violating article I, section 5 of the  Washington State Constitution.”

 Now, we await the federal court’s ruling…

A number of monitoring product marketed as parental controls openly tout their ability to do this.  The website of the monitoring product IamBigBrother states:

“Do you know who your kids chatted with last night? Our software runs in stealth mode where it is not detected by the user of the computer. It captures everything from chats and instant messages to email, web sites and much more. It can even take a picture of the screen when certain words are typed!”

 Another product, IMView pitches:

“Monitoring your child’s computer activity is a personal parenting decision, therefore we have made imView completely invisible on the host machine and this allows parents to choose whether or not they are telling their children their computer activity is being monitored.”

 And PC Tattletale warns parents:

“As a parent, you have to ask yourself: “Am I really comfortable with what my child is doing online?”  For most parents the answer is – no. And it is because most parents don’t really know what their children are doing online, who they talk to, or what private information they share.  Who’s Protecting Your Child From Internet Predators, Pedophiles, Cyber Stalkers, Online Sex Offenders When You’re Not There?  Our special “Stealth Technology” — Once installed PC Tattletale will not appear in the Windows Start Menu, Desktop, Task Manager, Program Files Folders, or even the Add/Remove programs menu because PC Tattletale is TOTALLY invisible to the user.” 

The problem with stealth monitoring is this technology has a huge potential for abuse, and organizations that work with victims of domestic violence are concerned, as expressed in this article from PC World:

“These commercial surveillance packages are turning up in domestic violence cases,” says Cindy Southworth, director of technology at the Washington, D.C.-based organization National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV). The group gets many calls from women who say their abusers know too much. “We advise women, if you’re researching an escape plan or trying to find a new job, don’t do it on your home PC.”

It’s hard to see what the legitimate uses are for “stealth monitoring.”  It’s perfectly legitimate in any number of circumstances to monitor your children’s Internet use, but why wouldn’t you want to tell them you’re going to be watching?  If your teen’s Internet use is so risky or out-of-control that you’re afraid to tell them they are being monitored, then why are you letting them use the Internet unsupervised or at all? 

Fortunately, newer parental control products that are combining filtering and monitoring such as Norton Online Family and McAfee Family Protection don’t appear to offer “stealth monitoring” and that’s a good sign.  I hope the rest of the parental control companies will choose to delete stealth monitoring.

So it’s not hard to see understand why many online safety advocates are concerned about minors using Chatroulette – it’s the virtual equivalent of allowing a sexual exposer to peek into your child’s bedroom window.  Parents should make sure they block this site.     

Parental control vendors are catching on.  In a blog post the parental control vendor Safe Eyes describes how they block the site.   Cyber Patrol has the site blocked as “Adult/Sexually Explicit”, and Blue Coat’s K9 blocks it under “Adult/Mature Content.” 

Some parental control vendors haven’t caught up yet, and aren’t properly classifying this site as sexually explicit, but they should.  McAfee classifies it as “Streaming Media” and “Media Sharing”,  while OpenDNS only categorizes it as “Chat.”   (UPDATE:  OpenDNS has since classifed ChatRoulette as “Adult Themes.”  Thanks, Open DNS!)  So parents using these products won’t be blocking Chatroulette unless they block all chat or streaming media. 

Fortunately, almost every Internet parental control product allows parents to add individual sites to their block list, so parents should do this immediately.  Parents who don’t have parental controls can still block this site if they have Windows, as described in a blog post, “How to Block Chatroulette on Your PC.” 

–David Burt

In addition to broadening the focus of this site, I’ve placed a much greater emphasis on providing usable information for parents regarding how to select parental controls, and which parental controls they really need. 

The original Filtering Facts sites began in 1997, and focused on promoting filtering technology as a way to protect children in schools and libraries.  This site was discontinued in 2000, and an archived version of the original Filtering Facts website can be found on the Archive.org site.

In 2007, I revived the website and blog focusing on the various aspects of Internet filtering technology for computers, including legal, technical, political, and economic issues. Most of the older Filtering Facts content that focused on legal, policy, and research aspects of filtering software is still available on this site, and is now archived at http://www.getparentalcontrols.org/policy-research/

For the record, GetParentalControls.org is not affiliated with any company or organization (including my employer, Microsoft), is run entirely by volunteer effort, and accepts no outside funding and no advertising. 

I’m excited about this latest evolution of Filtering Facts, and I hope it proves a useful resource for parents looking to safely navigate they online world with their children.

–David Burt