Always a contentious topic, we look server-based Internet content filters and some of the reasons why your organisation might want one, or not.
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Undeniably someone needs to stand up and be the sheriff in this global frontier, but who? And because it affects the global community, not just a single set of users, then how? Has the time come to turn off the Internet or make a wholesale upgrade?
The arguments on this subject are endless and emotionally charged. The impending changeover to IPv6 may provide the opportunity to also start applying some international laws and standardised regulations on content.
Content filters have surreptitiously crept into the digital landscape over the past year or two, generally under the guise of being added features packaged with antivirus, firewalls, or spam filters (and other traffic inspection systems such as these). Depending on the operator's incentive or need for deploying such tools, there is even perhaps a valid reason for all the posturing and positioning of the filtering products. Indeed, some organisations may even be justified hiding them in clandestine locations to spring on the unwary.
Whether you believe it or not, many people actually take their privacy for granted and would not like to think their online experiences and antics on the "anarchic" Internet could be traced, tracked, logged, or even -- shock horror -- controlled. The truth is that these products do exist and have been readily available for quite some time. Incorporating powerful feature sets, they enable the administrators to log virtually every aspect of the users they are able to control.
