|
|
Clearing the Cobwebs |
While the World Wide Web does cater for every conceivable taste, it caters particularly well for those individuals with very sordid inclinations. Many people are making a quid out of this.
Pornographic material has always been available - but in past times you had at least to go a little out of your way and face some degree of public exposure to find it. Now very sexually explicit material is often accessed inadvertently.
I now receive at least 30 unsolicited 'junk' mails every day. This could be useful, I suppose, if I ever needed to extend part of my anatomy, meet a lonely Russian housewife, bet in an exciting offshore casino, invest money with a shady Nicaraguan ex-minister, or chat (?) with some rather athletic and open minded young college girls.
On the web, many legitimate domain names that have not been renewed after the dot.com bubble burst have been hijacked by our unsavourary friends and redirected to porn portals or gambling sites (1). Visitors to the Washington Symphony Orchestra site, for example, would be somewhat surprised at the rehearsal methods of the musicians. A search of the US Dept of Education website found 15 unintentional links to pornographic sites.
And many webmasters employ methods that disguise their sites purpose in search engines, so that legitimate searches return illegitimate results.
Due to the 'pop-up' windows employed on such sites, every attempt to close a window sucks the unsuspecting visitor into a vortex of new, ever more lurid windows.
And online chat rooms are known to be a haunt of predatory adults.
The increasing use of the internet by children at school and at home increases their chance of exposure to unsavourary material, either accidentally or through misdirected curiosity.
A recent study of children aged 16-17 by the Australian Institute showed that 84% of respondent boys and 60% of girls had experienced accidental exposure to pornnographic material online. (38% of boys and 2% of girls had deliberately sort out Internet sex sites) (2) Another recent Australian study found that 53% of children aged 11-17 had seen something on the internet that they found offensive or disgusting (it made them feel ?sick, yucky, disgusted, repulsed or upset?).
Current regulatory measures are failing dismally.
The Australian Institute report 'Regulating Youth Access to Pornography' recommends a strategy based on education and opt-out filtering of X-rated material at the ISP level. (3)
Certainly, education in internet use, rules of engagment and supervision of online time are the most effective way of monitoring computer use. Improving students' information skills reduces their likelihood of inadvertently encountering undesirable content. Education can promote ethical norms and practical evaluation skills that will enable students to better understand pornographic material, and therby help protect them from inappropriate and disturbing images. Appropriate use of the internet can be discussed and 'contracted' with children.(4)
What other technological methods of content filtering are available? Here is a brief and incomplete list.
| Child Friendly Search Engines |
I was interested to note that our school prohibits the use of search engine for students, due to the probability that undesirable content will be accessed.
Yahooligans (www.yahooligans.com) is a sub-site within Yahoo that is designed for use by children and is highly recommended for searching. It also includes a special news service directed at students, a question and answer service, and plenty of interactive games (that don't allow chat). It would make an excellent home site for your browser.
Google enables you to set your preference for ?SafeSearch?. This option is largely effective in filtering explicit sexual material. Go to
http://www.google.com.au/preferences?hl=en
Ask Jeeves has an excellent children?s search engine at http://www.ajkids.com
| Content Filtering Software |
A number of software packages filter internet content. This is acheived by using a database of known undesirable sites, and by examining each page for suspect keywords. Some even incorporate an image scanning function that blocks images that may be pornographic. Early versions of these programs were criticised for blocking legitimate sites such as those on breast cancer. At one stage the White House site was blocked as Bill Clinton has turkey breast for thanksgiving dinner (this was probably a good thing).
Their effectiveness has also been questioned. In one survey, the best perfoming software failing to block inappropriate material 38% of the time! (5)
Internet Explorer can be set up (through the Tools>Internet Options >Content menu) to block access to rated sites. However, so few sites undertake the self-regulated rating regime as to make this feature ineffective.
The latest versions of specialised filtering software appear to be more sophisticated than their predecessors. I have been testing ContentBarrier for MacOSX which is particularly easy to use and appears effective. The designers have, perhaps, a narrow sense of fun, as the default setting blocks Movies, Sport, TV, Alcohol, mp3s and Shopping! (Is there anything let pass?) It is easy, however, to change this to block just pornography, violence, chat and cults. It can be configured to scan incoming email and refuse to download suspect messages, and to monitor your chat program and disconnect when phrases are used identified as being predatory.
The Sydney Morning Herald has recently reviewed filtering software for Windows and identified NetNanny 5.0 as the best of the bunch. (6)
For work and school, there are also web proxy filters available at the server level to block undesirable content.
A number of email clients and add-ons can now be trained to recognise junk mail and delete it on the server, or immediately trash it if downloaded. After an initial training period during which messages are nominated as 'Junk' or 'Not Junk', they develop a system of rules that identifies junk mail with a helpful (but not 100%) accuracy. Have a look at the inbuilt mail application on MacOSX and Mailwasher or Spamnet for Windows. (7)
Supervision and education remain the primary strategy for 'clearing the cobwebs' of intenet content. Regulatory restrictions at the current time are ineffective. It remains prudent for all parents to remain informed about their children's use of the internet and to take simple measures to aid in their protection.
|
|
|
|
