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 | 5 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 [...]
Filed under: Filtering, Legal, Libraries, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
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 | 4 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 [...]
Filed under: Filtering, Internet Safety, Policy | 2 Comments »
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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Broadcasting & Cable gives a preview of the upcoming report on parental controls mandated by the Child Safe Viewing Act: The FCC’s report to Congress on the state of media-screening technologies, due by the end of this month, comes to two broad conclusions, but does not suggest any action items beyond opening an inquiry prompted [...]
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I’ve identified over 40 products marketed as parental controls. What I’ve found is that most Internet parental control products at their core are either filtering products that specialize in categorizing and blocking websites, or monitoring products that focus on creating a detailed record of Internet activity. There are some really good filters out there – [...]
Filed under: Filtering | 3 Comments »
Parental Control vendor announced a free electronic book “Surfing Among the Cyber Sharks” available here: CyberPatrol LLC, a leading provider of tools to protect people online, announced today the release of Surfing Among the Cyber Sharks, a guidebook on Internet safety for parents, written by security veterans Vince Schiavone and Bob Kessinger with contributions from [...]
Filed under: Filtering Companies, Internet Safety | 2 Comments »
A new survey of parents from security vendor Trend Micro that the percentage of parents using filters is holding steady at 55%. This is almost the same as a Pew survey in 2005, which found that 54% were using Internet parental controls. A survey in the European Union earlier this year found 59% of parents [...]
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