Monday, August 6, 2012

Porn Blocking Software

Porn blocking software is a fantastic tool to protect your children from pornographic websites or other inappropriate content. What is this "other inappropriate content?" It should be up to you, as a parent, to decide what that definition is. Whether it be a website on how to make weapons such as bombs or makeshift guns, or websites about how to enlarge a man's penis with a magic pill, it should be up to you to decide.
There is a lot of pornographic material on the internet. In fact, it has been cited that a full 12 percent of websites are dedicated to porn which is, unsurprisingly, a multi-billion dollar industry. Further, hundreds of new sites that have porn are created every minute! This fact is very important to remember when you look for porn blocking software because of how the software works.
Most porn blocking software works by checking the URL of a webpage against a database that contains a list of URLs that have been known to have questionable content.
A "URL" is short for "Universal Resource Locator" but it is the text that is found in your browser's address bar. For example, Google's URL is http://www.google.com, Yahoo's URL is http://www.yahoo.com, and so on. With this in mind, there is a gaping hole in the security and effectiveness on many porn blocking software programs. These software programs are only as good as the list it keeps. This means that these hundreds of new sites that have harmful content may not be in your porn blocking software's latest database as it only checks the URL and not the content of the webpage.
It bears repeating that the very common drawbacks of all porn blocking software are these: they only check the URLs of a webpage and not the actual webpage and it is nearly impossible to keep up with the hundreds of new harmful sites that are created each minute so it is highly likely that your software's database is already out of date. This is why you get frustrated when you receive an email that shows men how they can enlarge their penis or when you are surfing the internet and a very graphic pop-up is shown even after you have installed your software program. Your porn blocking software may be working just fine but it is most probable that it is just out of date.
None of this is to scare you into thinking parents and even school administrators in charge of the library's computers have no recourse and porn blocking software is a bad idea. It is not a bad idea and it is better than to have no protection at all. Rather, there are guidelines and features you must have in mind when you are looking for software programs to protect your children. Good ones are out there and they are not all created equal. Do your homework and be educated. Doing so is the best way to know what is best for you and your kids.

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