Word: cyberpatrol
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...most advanced filters available make it unnecessary to do so. CyberPatrol, a piece of retail software from the same company that manages AOL's Web filters, is a customizable system that allows parents to choose which types of sites to block based on the parents' criteria. I may not want to block my children from information about gay and lesbian politics, but let's say you do: CyberPatrol accommodates. So does Net Nanny...
...tamperproof database--a trail of bread crumbs, as it were--so parents can examine every Web address the computer has visited since the last time Dad checked in. But consider this evidence of the complexity of the privacy issue: Susan Getgood, a vice president of the company that makes CyberPatrol, suggests that monitors have their own problems. "If a preteen is a child of an alcoholic parent," she asks, "and goes to a website that discusses alcohol abuse, and the parent finds out, what happens then...
...librarian in upstate New York, who nevertheless wrote a book called A Practical Guide to Internet Filters. Schneider's book reviews most commercial filters and explains how to make some of them at least serviceable. For instance, she advises that if you must buy a filter, pick one like Cyberpatrol, which allows you to disable "keyword blocking"--a way of getting around the breasts problem that afflicted the grocer. That way, your filter will block access only to a preselected list of offensive sites, rather than banning all the sites containing a suspect word. Of course, what constitutes an offensive...
...better method is to study individual sites--yes, that means hundreds of thousands of them, one at a time--and then place them on yes or no lists that can be updated as new pages pop up in the Web's endless sprawl. A program called CyberPatrol identifies 12 categories of troublesome material (violence, profanity, sexual acts and so on) that parents can block at their discretion. The software can also be adjusted for different age groups. "My six-year-old son doesn't need to know how to put on a condom," says CyberPatrol spokeswoman Sydney Rubin...
...banned lists can also reflect ideological biases. CyberSitter, the most aggressively conservative filtering program, is infamous for blocking access to the National Organization for Women's Website as well as entire Internet providers like Echo, New York City's oldest online community. Gay-themed sites--big surprise--suffer mightily. CyberPatrol blocks the Queer Resources Directory; CyberSitter bans the alt.politics.homosexual newsgroup; SurfWatch blocks ClariNet's AP and Reuters articles about AIDS...