Inside Internet Filtering

October, 20, 2008, D-Link announced that it is brining its SECURESPOT 2.0 services to three of their Internet gateway routers.  This was previously only available on the stand alone DSD-150 Internet Security Adapter.

The SECURESPOT services include:

• Firewall
• Internet Filtering
• Internet Usage Reporting
• Anti-Virus/Anti-Spyware
• Popup Blocker and Spam Blocker

In addition to the DSD -150 the services will now be available on:

• DIR-655 Xtreme N(TM) Gigabit
• DIR-625 RangeBooster N(R)
• DIR-628 RangeBooster N Dual Band Routers

The SECURESPOT services are available in two packages.

• Family Protection - Parental Control Features for unlimited devices for $30 a year.
• Total Protection - Which includes virus and spyware features, 3 computers for $60 a year.

It appears as though if you already have one of these routers you can upgrade your firmware to get access to the SECURESPOT service.  More information can be found on the D-Link SECURESPOT router page.

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October, 20, 2008 Crisp Thinking announced the availability of IMSaferPlus.  Available for both PC and Mac, IMSaferPlus sells for $23.95 per year.  However, their website currently lists a “Lifetime” membership for $32.95.

IMSafer monitors Instant Messaging for inappropriate content and reports on information posted on Social Networking profiles.

The plus version includes instant alerts of suspicious IM conversations, a “Reputation Network” to flag dangerous web users, and a deeper level of social network monitoring than the free version of IMSafer.

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A couple months back a customer asked me over lunch “Why can’t you just block the bad videos on YouTube?”  I started into a technical explanation of how difficult filtering video streams is.  Part way through the answer an idea sprang to life.  I could barely wait to get back to the office and pound out a proof of concept.

I’m excited to be able to announce an enhancement to our Safe Eyes parental control software which provides clip-by-clip filtering on YouTube.

Traditionally most Internet filters have either blocked or allowed YouTube as a whole.  Most often it was blocked.  The new filtering capability in Safe Eyes represents the first time an Internet filter has been able to allow or block individual YouTube clips based on their content no matter where they appear online.

YouTube is the third most heavily trafficked website in the world and the fourth in the U.S., after Google, Yahoo and MySpace. Blocking the whole site is unnecessary for families because it means blocking good content along with bad, including perfectly innocent videos making the rounds among friends.  Safe Eyes’ new ability to filter out only the offensive clips solves the problem.
- Forrest Collier, CEO of InternetSafety.com

The new YouTube filtering is included in the latest version of Safe Eyes and available now at www.safeeyes.com.  Thanks to the entire Safe Eyes team for turning this “lunch table idea” into a reality.

Press Release: Keep YouTube ‘Clean’ for Your Kids with Safe Eyes

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CyberPatrol today announced a new business-level filtering product called SiteSURV (Press Release).

The product uses a DNS poisoning technique to accomplish the filtering by checking DNS lookups against CyberPatrol’s site database.  While this type of filtering is easy to deploy by simply changing your DNS settings, it is also among the easiest to bypass (I won’t go into details on how).

They have two versions currently: the standard version and a self hosted version for larger organizations (SiteSURV Plus).  The plus version seems to have more customization capability than the standard version, such as choosing your categories, and creating your own list of allowed/blocked sites.  However, with the plus version you also will need to furnish your own windows based server to run the software on.

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ContentWatch, the developer of NetNanny, announced the release of NetNanny for Mac.
From the release it appears the product will contain:

• Content Filtering
• Usage Reports
• Time Limits

The new Mac version of NetNanny will be available in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Japanese for $39.99 for one computer and $20 for each additional computer.

More information is supposed to be availabe online at: www.netnanny.com/mac However, the link was not working at the time of this posting.

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