Talk:Internet filtering (Family Safety)

For question 4 (4. Do you want to prevent inadvertent access, or are you trying to stop someone from their deliberate attempts to view inappropriate material?), I don't want to presume to edit the page cold turkey, but I would appreciate it if we could discuss some alternate wording to shore up the case where the people being blocked are likely to look for ways around the filter. I submit that it's not that difficult, even without lots of technical knowledge, to get to pages that should have been blocked for someone who is curios and persistent. There are a number of ways to get through any software filter without shutting it off or otherwise subverting its security measures. No filters work via image recognition (and won't for quite a few years to come), so they rely on lists of known site domains and phrases to be blocked. Because of this there exist a small, but still sizable, number of sites that simply aren't blocked at any given moment in time, even with daily updates to the software.

It is true that someone who has sufficient technical ability can find other ways to disable the security measures, but those methods take quite a bit of time, know-how, and experience. Guessing a site that isn't on a list somewhere can be done in a matter of minutes by anyone clever enough to take a guess at it.

I propose that one alternate option, for those looking for filters to block deliberate searching for pornographic or other would-be banned sites, is software that enables the one setting the filter to define a finite set of sites that are allowed, rather than sites to be blocked. This is the only guarantee of blocking new sites or sites that are otherwise not covered by the current set of site addresses and key phrases put out by the software vendors. Not all filtering software supports this type of blocking, so it is a valuable data point to consider when making the determination of what type of software one wants and what its feature set is. -- ejmowrer

Other methods of protecting from accidental exposure.

I noticed a good method of avoiding porn etc. was ignored. While not a method to prevent people who want to access such material, it can protect from popups and ads, which can be a stepping stone to addiction. On many web browsers such as Firefox, Opera, and Chromium, people have developed Ad blocking software. The one that my family uses is adblock plus and adblock plus popup for Firefox. If a family were to use this, it would help prevent accidental access. I believe that this is an important part in a multilayered stratagy of protecting your family. --W.King.II