The Internet’s adult content can be a big worry for parents.

We test three programs designed to keep young eyes away from grown-up pages

Censorship is a huge issue among the Internet community and, with the exception of some Islamic countries, China, and Germany, Net access has been left more or less completely open to all. It’s so difficult to patrol an international network of this kind that only the most obscene material, such as paedophilia images, have seen much of a crackdown. This means that the decision on what a child should or shouldn’t be allowed to see online is left where it belongs - in the hands of the parents.The trouble is that you can’t expect to be looking over your child’s shoulder every minute he or she is online, and the only real answer is the use of a filtering program which will cut off access to adult-related content while allowing the child to view everything else. By checking a Web page or a newsgroup against a blacklist, or comparing its content to a list of adult words and phrases, most of these packages perform the same sort of function. The difference is in the detail, as our three-way comparison shows.

Net Nanny 3.10

Net Nanny’s lists are easy to update and configure for different reactions to adult content

One of the oldest and most established filtering programs, Net Nanny looks a little long in the tooth compared to more modern Windows packages, but it is also extremely easy to use and configure. Its filtering operation is based on lists of Web sites and newsgroups that are judged unsuitable for kids, updated versions of which can be downloaded from the program’s Web site at regular intervals.

There are five types of list, including check lists for Web sites, newsgroups, IRC chat services, and 16-bit Windows applications that include most chat programs and browsers, so it’s possible to scan for naughty content on the major services or just stop a child accessing the programs he or she needs for access in the first place. The program’s control screens are clean and clutter-free, giving this a high appeal factor for technophobes, and creating your own list or editing an existing one is also a very simple job. Each list can be set to log any access to sites on the list, flash a warning screen, or simply shut down the offending application, be it a browser or a news reader.

Where the program falls down a little is in its user profiling. Unlike some programs, Net Nanny doesn’t apply a varying amount of security to different users, though the override privilege can be assigned to any user you like. What this means is that a teenage child and a 10 year old would find the same alerts cropping up, with the teenager perhaps having the option to override by typing in a password. For peace of mind, most parents would leave the blanket ban running on all users, so a more flexible arrangement would be more useful.

Other than this, there’s little on which to criticise Net Nanny. Lists can include wildcard entries such as ‘alt.binaries’ to stop access to all newsgroups that carry images (where much of the online porn is located), or ‘www.x’ to filter out all those sites called something like ‘www.xxxfiles.com’. With its ease of use and simple operation, Net Nanny offers a good level of security without the need for PC expertise, and gets a high score on that count alone.

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