CyberPatrol 6.1
CyberPatrol uses a web-based install routine, something that may deter potential purchasers the first time a security warning pops up. To its credit, CyberPatrol's installation page walks timid users through step by step, including one of the largest downloadable installers we've seen, clocking in at 10.3MB. Once installed, the software prompts for a master password, which it refers to as the 'headquarters' password -- same thing, different term. It backs this up with a password hint; we're not sure about the overall security of this approach. Rather than having a question with a correct answer, the hint will need to relate to the real password, an approach that could inadvertently lead to unauthorised users working out the password and rendering the point of having a filtering solution moot.
Once installed, CyberPatrol sits in the taskbar, and uses an interesting dual windowed approach. Any user can check current filtering status and change user via a very small window, while only those with the headquarters password can access CyberPatrol's headquarters where program parameters are set. Like every other package in our testing, CyberPatrol supports user-defined white and blacklists, as well as keyword black and whitelists. We're not quite sure what the point of a keyword whitelist is, unless you want extremely fine-grained control of a user's surfing habits.
Cyberpatrol's categories list covers a wide range of topics: Adult/Sexually Explicit, Chat, Criminal Skills, Drugs, Alcohol & Tobacco, Gambling, Glamour & Intimate Apparel, Hacking, Hate Speech, Remote Proxies, Sex Education, Violence, Weapons and Multiple Category Servers. You can toggle filtering for each of these categories, but CyberPatrol offers no facility to view its master list of blocked sites. CyberPatrol also offers additional filtering options, including newsgroup and chat filtering, program execution limiting (by user name or time) and user time management.
When CyberPatrol detects a site that matches its criteria, it instead loads an explanatory page detailing why the site's been blocked. This is an approach we feel best suits the needs of both system administrators and users; it allows admins to quickly categorise sites, and allows users to see why they've been blocked and potentially allow them to argue for a site's whitelisting, which somewhat (but not entirely) alleviates the problem of not being able to see CyberPatrol's master list.
In our testing, CyberPatrol managed to move beyond the 'block sex sites' ethic that many of the other filters in our roundup seemed pre-occupied with, managing to filter out a reasonable quantity of material covering other topics. Given that it offers an explanation of its block, we were sometimes left wondering why it picked certain categories. We tested with CyberPatrol's default setup, and based on our testing we'd advise any potential users to carefully select categories, as CyberPatrol tends towards the conservative when choosing whether to block sites or not. While it fell into the common trap of loading one particularly offensive images site, it did manage to pass our inoffensive filtering parody page, something that many other packages fell over on.
At US$39, CyberPatrol's one of the costlier packages in our roundup, and this is further exacerbated by the fact that the package includes a subscription component; your US$39 buys you one year's subscription. Let your subscription lapse, and you can opt to block everything, or nothing, but not to simply continue to use the existing blacklist.
CyberPatrol
Company: CyberPatrol
Price: US$39 plus subscription
| Introduction | Editor's Choice | How we tested | |
| AllegroSurf | ChildSafe | ChildWebGuardian | ControlKids |
| CyberPatrol | Cybersitter | Net Nanny | WeBlocker |
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