Australian scientists rank Net filters - News - Security

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Australian scientists rank Net filters

By James Pearce, ZDNet Australia
March 26, 2002
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/soa/Australian-scientists-rank-Net-filters/0,130061744,120264258,00.htm

Internet filters have undergone rigorous testing by Australian scientists, who have ranked them according to ease of use and effectiveness in an attempt to better inform the public of products in the marketplace.

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) today released a report entitled Effectiveness of Internet Filtering Software Products", jointly commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Association (ABA) and independent community advisory body NetAlert. The report can be downloaded from the NetAlert Web site and is the basis for the Intetnet Industry Association's (IIA) suggested filters under their Family Friendly Seal program.

-Education and the protection of children and their families is essential to NetAlert's existence," said Karyn Hart, NetAlert chair.

The CSIRO tested 14 filters. Paul Greenfield, group leader for network applications and technologies CSIRO, pointed out that there is a trade-off between effectively blocking content and allowing people to access innocuous sites. It is important to choose a filter appropriate to the situation.

-The Internet is a big place, nobody knows how many millions of pornographic Web sites there are," he said. -Blocking over 80 percent is quite effective. Good products manage over 90 percent."

The three different filter types are 'white filters', which have a list of included sites people can visit, 'black filters', which have a list of excluded sites that people cannot visit, and those which examine content and block it when it fails acceptability tests. Since no filter can determine between appropriate and inappropriate sites 100 percent of the time, it's not recommended that this be the only line of defence against inappropriate content.

-We strongly advise parents not to rely on this software as a parenting substitution," according to ABA chairman, Professor David Flint.

Justin Milne, IIA chairman, agreed. -The best filter is putting a computer in a public place, where parents can walk past and see the screen occasionally," he said.

The most effective filters for blocking pornography/erotica were white list filters such as AOL under 12 and Too C.O.O.L., which each blocked 100 percent of inappropriate sites tested. However, they also blocked most Web sites altogether, with Too C.O.O.L. blocking more than 90 percent of every category.

The AOL 16-17 filter blocked 90 percent of porn and let through more than 85 percent of sex education sites. Smart Filter was also good in this regard, blocking around 85 percent of porn and letting through almost 95 percent of sex education sites, according to the report.

Filters that rely on black lists give greater control over what sort of site can be accessed, but greatly reduce the level of blocked sites. The report found that Cyber Patrol 5.0 blocked less than 50 percent of pornography/erotica Web sites, and Net Nanny 4.0 blocked around 30 percent. Both these sites had a low rate of wrongly blocking appropriate pages.