Inside Internet Filtering

Silence

Aaron Kenny — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 19:51:48 +0000

I just noticed I haven’t written here since August. Sorry for the silence, there has been a lot going on.

If you follow my company (our I should say my former company) InternetSafety.com, you will have noticed that we were acquired by McAfee. In a large part, this is what has led to my silence. Bringing two companies together is a lot of work.

Since the acquisition I get a lot of people asking me “So what are you doing now?” The answer is the same thing I have been doing, I’m making the Internet a safer place. The only difference is now I have the global McAfee team helping me.

More later. Thanks for reading.

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Which Protects Better: Technology or Education

Aaron Kenny — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 21:22:26 +0000

In the world Online Safety it seems that battle lines are often drawn over protecting children with Technology vs. Education. David Burt, blogger at GetParentalControls.org, wrote on this topic today: http://getparentalcontrols.org/2010/08/02/which-is-better-at-protecting-children-online-technology-or-education/

He’s right…it takes both. That is why InternetSafety.com makes available both free Internet Safety Resources and best-in-class tools like Safe Eyes. As part of our ongoing education effort we tackle the most current Internet Safety issues on our Blog, Facebook and Twitter pages. So no matter how you like to get informed you can stay up to speed on the latest in Internet Safety.

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Good Day Atlanta Cyber-bullying Segment

Aaron Kenny — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:55:23 +0000

Thursday morning I was on Good Day Atalanta to Discuss the Jesse Slaughter story and what families can do to deal with cyber-bullying. Here is a link to the clip.

http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/dpp/good_day_atl/Monitoring-Your-Kids-Internet-Activity-20100729-gda-sd

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Fox News’ Tech Tuesday Tackles .xxx Domains

Aaron Kenny — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 01:09:41 +0000

.XXX domain names don’t improve filtering

Aaron Kenny — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:49:12 +0000

On Friday, June 25th 2010, ICANN approved the .xxx domain extension after many years of debate. They claim that this is helpful because by creating an “adults only” section of the Internet it will make it easier to filter. Instead of having to block sites one by one, like we must on the .com extension, they say filtering companies could just block any domain with ending in .xxx.

This just isn’t the case:

1. Just because .xxx now exists, doesn’t mean all the porn sites with .com addresses will change to .xxx. So we still have to filter .com sites one-by-one.

2. Porn sites likely won’t stop buying .com and only buy .xxx. I expect them to buy both the .com and the .xxx. So there will likely be more porn domains in the future.

3. .xxx domains aren’t limited to just adult sites. Non adult sites will buy the .xxx site to protect their name, and many are already reserving them. So, a blanket block of .xxx by an Internet filter could result in over blocking.

In the end the .xxx domain won’t make Internet filtering any easier, but it won’t necessarily make the job any more difficult either.

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Safe Eyes Mobile for iPad Review

Aaron Kenny — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 20:50:33 +0000

Here is a great video review of Safe Eyes Mobile for iPad by the Daily App Show. Jared especially likes the tabbed browsing we added for iPad.

You can buy Safe Eyes Mobile on the AppStore

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Google’s Encrypted Search

Aaron Kenny — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:16:18 +0000

Google recently rolled out a new feature for Google searches that enabled secure searching via https. While this was a step forward for privacy, however, it was done in a way that was a step backward for Internet filtering.

Many parents, schools and businesses filter Google base on search terms. Additionally, many Internet filtering products, like Safe Eyes, automatically enable Safe Search by altering traffic destined for Google. The encryption gets in the way of these type of features.

ZDnet is reporting that Google has been alerted to the problem as is working on a solution. I’m glad to see Google working on a solution to this issue.

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Google TV - Parental Controls?

Aaron Kenny — Fri, 21 May 2010 14:50:04 +0000

Yesterday Google announced its new Google TV platform. Given our recent expansion into online TV filtering the first thing that popped into my head was to wonder about parental controls.

This morning I find an editorial by Lance Ulanoff, PC Magazine’s Editor in Cheif, asking 8 Big Questions about Google TV. His 3rd question is: What about parental controls?

With the whole Internet now on your biggest and best screen, parental controls become more important than ever. Google never talked about how, without any kind of security software on these boxes, you’ll be able to filter out bad and offensive results. Before you race out and buy the first Google TV device this fall, you may want to check that you can either filter results or simply lock down the system so your children can only use it when you’re around.

Parental controls need to be a basic feature of any new platform emerging today, yet most companies totally bypass this area of social responsibility. Consumer electronics manufacturers need to provide the security industry with the hooks necessary to build parental controls, or build them into their products themselves. Not doing so is irresponsible and endangers our children.

Each manufacturer building parental controls poses another problem though. A parent has to learn the controls available on each device, which is a difficult undertaking. The solution here is for the manufacturer’s to expose these controls to parental control software developers via API’s. This then allows the existing products on the market to create a consistent parental control experience for parents across all these new devices.

You can see this trend starting to appear. In Safe Eyes 6, we added integration with iTunes parental controls for the types of music and video content a child can access. It is a great example of the future role of software like Safe Eyes, to help parents navigate the myriad of parental controls on the market.

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Safe Eyes Mobile Available for iPad Launch

Aaron Kenny — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 20:56:36 +0000

Simultaneous with the April 3, 2010, release of Apple’s iPad, Safe Eyes Mobile for iPad made its debut becoming the first Internet Filter specifically designed for the iPad.

The iPad version of Safe Eyes Mobile filters in the same way the iPhone version does. However, the larger screen opened up new possibilities for the user interface. So we set to work creating a new user interface for the iPad version that incorporated true tabbed browsing.

Full Press Release

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Safe Eye 6 announced with Internet TV Filtering

Aaron Kenny — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:57:10 +0000

Greetings from Las Vega and the Consumer Electronics Show 2010.

Today I am excited to announce the latest revision of Safe Eyes, which includes another industry first. Safe Eyes 6 is able to filter online TV sites on a show by show basis. This means that you no longer have to block or allow an entire website like Hulu, but instead you can allow specific shows based on the TV rating for that show (TV-G, TV-PG, etc).

We have some other great stuff packed in this release too. You can learn all about it on the Safe Eyes 6 preview page.

Other enhancements include:

A new activity-centric interface
Smarter Activity Reports
Integrated Safe Search and Search Term Reporting
Integration with iTunes to block songs and content with explicit lyrics

More on Safe Eyes 6 later. If you are at CES stop by our booth for a demo (#3128).

Official Press Release for Safe Eyes 6 from InernetSafety.com

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