Monday, October 26, 2009

CyberPatrol software and how it filters

I tried the web filter software CyberPatrol which is supposed to be a market leader in the field in the U.S.

During the installation I chose "Home" user category ( Other being "School" , "Business" etc. ) and also chose the "Child" level filtering which is supposed to be the most intense filtering ( "Late teens" and other such categories are also available ). You can also restrict the users Web access by time of day and set the daily and weekly browse limits. All web activity will be recorded.

After installing it needed to reset the browser and start again. As I conducted the test late in the evening the program initially blocked all websites, by saying the following:

"
Access Restricted
User Profile:
Reason: Access to websites is denied at this time of day.
Category: None
Instant Override: Click here - Password Required
To change any of the filter settings please speak to your CyberPatrol Headquarters’ Administrator."


Then I customized my filter settings and took the Time Monitoring off from the Headquarters, using the user password.

After that I tried to read the website seks.ee and the following message came up:

Access Restricted
User Profile:
Reason: The website is inappropriate.
Category: Hacking & Spyware
Instant Override: Click here - Password Required


To change any of the filter settings please speak to your CyberPatrol Headquarters’ Administrator.

After that the rate.ee portal was tried. I entered the word "seks" into the user searc field and many users with photoes came out. The soft did not block the website although the
page had the word "seks" repeated more than ten times as well as the photos were displayed. As this is not a sex related site in essense but a dating site, it could be normal that the site was
not completely shut off. Then I went to the www.date.ee which also opened nicely while this is also a dating site.

Also tried Google. The regular web search with the word "seks" opened up nicely
http://www.google.ee/search?q=seks&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:et:official&client=firefox-a and the results were displayed but if I tried to search the Google images with the word "seks" - the Google site was blocked as well. Also - the regular search with the word "sex" in English language was blocked righ away. Go figure.

Estonias biggest portal delfi.ee is also considered not appropriate for children to see, the Cyberpatrol said that Delfi portal has some "bad links" on their site.

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