Blocking offensive material

From HelpDeskWiki

One of the pitfalls of Internet access when there are kids around is the ready availability of material which is sexually explicit, violent, racist, or otherwise promotes attitudes which many people do not want their family to be gratuituously exposed to. There are a number of different issues relating to this kind of material, how it can appear on your computer, and how to block it.

Blocking accidental pornography

If your computer is not secured, and/or if you often go to web sites which may be described as "less reputable", then offensive material can appear on your computer, even without deliberately looking for it. Because offensive material is often connected to malware, following the steps described in the article on Malware blocking and avoidance will block nearly all of these accidental exposures, in addition to securing your computer against malware. This can also block against many deliberate attempts to visit offensive sites.

Another step to take is to ensure that your preferred search engine is set to show only "safe" sites. If you use Google (http://www.google.com/preferences), click on the Preferences link. For MSN Search (http://search.msn.com/settings.aspx), click on the Settings link. Both of these will take you to a page where you can enable "Safe Search", which filters explicit content. If you use another search engine, the process is similar. Note that this must be done for each account, if you have multiple accounts on a computer (see below). Note that these settings will be reset if you clear out cookies.

If you use Firefox (http://www.mozilla.org) or Opera (http://www.opera.com/), make sure you haven't turned off the default popup blocker (Tools -> Options -> Web features). If you use Internet Explorer and have Windows XP SP2, you should turn on the popup blocker. To do this, open Internet Explorer, then click on Tools -> Pop-up Blocker -> Turn On Pop-up Blocker. This will stop popup ads, many of which are offensive, as well as some "drive-by downloads" which can put malware on your system.

A lot of spam is offensive, and it often carries/introduces malware or promotes malware. Thus, you may want to look into a separate spam blocking program or service such as POPFile (http://popfile.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl) or Spamihilator (http://www.spamihilator.com) or one that is integrated into an email program such as Thunderbird (http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird). Many ISPs now offer spam filtering, often for free as part of their Internet service. Before accepting this, ensure that you have the ability to look over filtered email to be sure that a good email did not get filtered accidentally. If you use a web-based email service such as Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail, make sure that your address book contains the sender email addresses for emails that you want to receive.

Active blocking

If you have people in your household whom you want to actively block from accessing offensive material, there are several things that you can do, depending upon how much effort and money you want to put into the matter.

First, if you haven't yet, implement the steps listed above for blocking accidental offensive material. Those steps can block not only certain offensive sites, but also some other undesirable sites that can cause you to have trouble with your computer.

Next, if you use Internet Explorer, turn on its Content Advisor. To do this, open Internet Explorer, and click on Tools -> Internet Options. When the Internet Options window appears, click on the Content tab. The top-most section is for Content Advisor. To enable Content Advisor, click on the Enable button.

Once enabled, there are a number of different types of material that can be blocked, as well as different levels of blocking. On the next tab, you can approve or disapprove specific sites. On the third tab, you can specify whether unrated sites are visible or not. Note that most sites are not rated, so enabling this will block many sites that you might otherwise consider acceptable. Once you make the changes that you want, you will be prompted for a password to use.

Note that Content Advisor is relatively simple, and is not able to rate sites which do not have a rating code; it can either block all or none of them. There is also the possibility of sites with incorrect ratings, whether deliberately or accidentally. To control access to sites which do not have a rating code, you will need a commercial program such as NetNanny (http://www.netnanny.com), CyberPatrol (http://www.cyberpatrol.com), CyberSitter (http://www.cybersitter.com), or F-Secure Internet Security (http://www.f-secure.com/products/anti-virus/fsis2005/). These also have the advantage of working with any browser, such as Firefox or Opera.

In case you choose one of these, make sure that it's one which YOU can control, especially if you are in a business environment. For example, a plumbing company that uses a content blocker in which sites can only be unblocked by the software company may find that it needs to wait for an unacceptable amount of time before being able to access sites which contain standard plumbing terms such as "ballcock".

Locking the lock

Once Content Advisor is set up, any school age kid can easily turn it off within about 15 minutes by searching online to find out how. Someone more knowledgeable can turn it back on again afterwards and clean up any tracks so that there is little sign of what happened. To prevent this (among other things), create a new user account for daily use, and use the regular administrator account only when necessary.

To do this, click on the Start button, then click Control Panel. Once in Control Panel, open up User Accounts. Create a new account, give it a name that you choose, and set it to Limited. Once you've created the account, go back to the main screen, select the account that you are using, which is probably called "Administrator", "Admin", "Owner", or something similar, and put a password on it. Be sure that the password is something that you can remember, but which others are unlikely to guess. Once done, log off and then log back on as the new user; use this new account for everything, where possible. Note that if you forget the password to the administrative account, you'll need a computer technician to reset the password; it takes only a minute or so with the right tools. With this in mind, you might want to verify that you can log onto the administrative account every once in a while just to be sure that someone has not gotten one of these tools and reset the password without your knowledge.

Using this limited account serves several purposes. First, this makes it harder for malware to infest or damage your system. Using the normal Administrator account gives such programs free reign. Second, this makes it difficult for other people to change or bypass your changes to the security settings (such as Content Advisor settings), or to install most software without your approval.