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…

 Parents were asked if they take specific actions to protect or monitor their children’s use of the Internet. Overall, parents report the following actions:

• • 65% disable pop-ups
• • 62% monitor social networking sites
• • 61% check history of websites
• • 49% block websites they don’t want kids to use
• • 32% use child-safe software

68% of parents report taking 1 to 4 of the above actions, while 19% take all 5 the of the actions listed. However, 13% of parents whose children access the Internet report not taking any of these actions to protect or monitor that use.  

Also interesting is what parents expressed the most concern about, “Predators, Privacy, and Porn:”

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 settings to make it harder (though not impossible) for kids to bypass the settings. To change the settings, the parent will have to log into his or her Google account and enter a password. 

This is great news for parents looking to make search engines, the primary means for accessing web content, safer for kids.  This is an improvement on Yahoo’s safe search password lock, which only requires a child to click “log out” to circumvent the settings.  When the user logs out of Google, the Google Safe Search cookie keeps the settings intact.  But as the CNET article points out though, this solution isn’t perfect:

If you set them only for Internet Explorer, for example, they won’t restrict access from Firefox, Chrome, or other browsers. Also, according to a Google representative, the child can get around the settings by using the private browsing feature that is now built into the latest versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome. 

Not only does using the IE InPrivate setting defeat the SafeSearch lock in Google, but the safe search settings of both Yahoo and Google are defeated by simply clicking Tools/Delete Browsing History/Cookies in IE and deleting all cookies.  Again, safe search password locking is a  great feature for younger users, but won’t stop a tech-savvy teen.  The best overall solution is for filtering vendors to build a safe search lock into their products that covers all major search engines.

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 U.N. investigator on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, Najat M’jid Maalla. “There is an increase in the number of sites recorded,” she told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, citing research by the U.K.-industry group Internet Watch Foundation. 

Four million seems a staggering number.  The Internet Watch Foundation maintains a blacklist of child porn sites, and issued research in January, 2009 that stated  the number was “fewer than 3,000.”  The IWF website notes that, “The list typically contains less than 1000 live child sexual abuse URLs at any one time.”  A blacklist maintained by Danish ISPs in February 2008, reported 3,863 blocked sites.  And an Australian government blacklist published by the website WikiList listed 2,395 pages. 

So where would these researchers get a figure like 4,000,000?  I see two possibilities, either credible:

1)       The four million number refers to child pornography images, not websites. In an interview with Reuters, “Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said its database now contains more than half a million images of children being sexually exploited.”  Not four million, but at least in the same ballpark.  A statistic of 4 million child pornography images in existence worldwide seems very credible.

2)      The four million number refers to all pornography sites, not just child pornography sites.  Research from 2004 and 2005 reported the total number of Internet pornography sites at 1.2 to 1.5 million, so a 4 million number is credible here as well. (Side note: counting the number of Internet pornography sites is difficult because the Internet porn industry operates by creating large numbers of free “feeder” sites that display free content in order to “feed” users to a few thousands pay sites).

 In any event, we need some explanation from the U.N. here on this number that seems wildly at odds with other research.

• 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 issue of data gathering by filtering companies more generally, including Symantec’s publication of anonymous web surfing data last month.  The issue of web filtering data is complicated, because “telemetry” data from users on blocked website is an extremely powerful tool for improving filters, but as Ramasubbu points out, extra care is required to ensure privacy.
• In the United Kingdom, Zack Whittaker on ZDNET asks, “Could Internet filtering cause more harm than good?:”
  Because of Pandora’s Box theory – once something happens, it can never be undone and is no doubt deemed to repeat itself in the future. Where does it stop? Should the Internet be entirely monitored and blocked to ensure the safety of its users? When is Internet filtering an abuse of governmental power, and how should it be regulated?
  
• In Thailand, the Wall Street Journal writes about, “Web Censoring Widens Across Southeast Asia:”
  Attempts to censor the Internet are spreading to Southeast Asia as governments turn to coercion and intimidation to rein in online criticism. Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam lack the kind of technology and financial resources that China and some other large countries use to police the Internet. The Southeast Asian nations are using other methods — also seen in China — to tamp down criticism, including arresting some bloggers and individuals posting contentious views online.
  
• In Canada, legislation has been proposed that would create a CIPA-type law for Canada requiring filters in schools and libraries.

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 by its survey of the current content-control landscape for a variety of media. That inquiry includes a request for better data, something that should come as no surprise for followers of the current commission. The FCC’s two conclusions: 1) There is no universal ratings system in place, and 2) better educating parents on how to use the existing systems would likely help drive adoption. That’s according to sources familiar with the report, which will be delivered to Congress by the end of the month, according to a Media Bureau spokesperson. The deadline is Aug. 29.

 I agree parents need to be better educated about controls, but the idea of universal ratings is problematic, at least for websites.  The reality is you have several dozen private companies each creating their own rating system.  Unlike video games or movies where some sort of industry body rates sites, no one is in charge of rating websites, because there are simply too many of them.  If you count social networking sites, there are hundreds of millions of individual “publishers” of websites.  Various Internet rating schemes such as PICS, ICRA, and RSACi have been tried and have never achieved the critical mass necessary.  For the foreseeable future, parents will have rely on proprietary rating systems from parental control vendors.

There are some really good filters out there – Cyber Patrol, Safe Eyes, OpenDNS, and Livia all do a good job blocking inappropriate content, especially porn. They are flexible with multiple categories and very accurate, continuously updated filtering databases.  Each of these products also offer “monitoring,” but the monitoring these filters offer mostly consists of recording and categorizing the websites users visit.  Helpful, but not enough in the age of social networks.  A report that tell you your kids spent a lot of time on Facebook tells you nothing about what they were doing while they were there. 

There are some fantastic monitoring products like Spector Pro,  PC Pandora, and IamBigBrother that provide a “Tivo-like” ability to record web surfing, as well as IM, e-mails, and just about everything else someone does online.  These product also offer “filters,” but the similarity stops at the name.  Spector Pro has the ability to “Block Any Website,” but what they offer is a feature where you can enter a URL for blocking.  Not that helpful if you want to shield your child from adult sites. 

What I’d really like to see is a product that offers the filtering of OpenDNS with the monitoring capabilities of Spector Pro.   McAfee and Symantec have taken the first steps in that direction with McAfee Family Protection and Online Family.Norton, but we need more 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 John Sancin and Barb Rose. The book uses real life examples, illustrations, and statistics that show the very real risks and consequences for kids posed by their online activity. 
The book compares online threats with sharks, ever present in what appears to be safe waters. “The shark analogy is perfect because parents immediately get it,” said Bob Kessinger. “Like sharks in the water the apparent safety of the Internet is full of Cyber Sharks, and if kids aren’t careful they can easily become victims.”
Most parents believe they have good kids that stay out of the bad places on the Internet. While that may be true, kids don’t have to go looking for trouble on line. The Cyber Sharks will come to them. “Unless parents know what to look for and do, their kids are at risk, and left on their own to defend themselves,” said Kessinger.

Parents may have a misperception of their kids’ online safety — over 65 percent of parents surveyed believe their kids are safe while using the Internet and 60 percent are not concerned about kids coming into contact with cyber threats such as spam and viruses, or inappropriate content such as nudity and gambling through Internet-related devices like game consoles aside from the computer. While the parental control feature in a security software program is a tool parents can use to prevent kids from accessing inappropriate Web site content – especially since 63 percent of parents surveyed said they will not be sending their kids to daycare or summer camps (and will likely be home alone) this year due to tighter family budgets — 45 percent of them said they either don’t have it, or they don’t know if they do. In addition, 30 percent of parents think their kids are protected from inappropriate Web site content.