We-Blocker 1.91
We-Blocker might have an unfortunate and somewhat urological-sounding name, but it does score brownie points for one feature it has over all the rest of the competition; it's free to install and use. As such, it poses a strong challenge to the rest of the software pack, as there's little reason to put down money when a free alternative is available.
Installation of We-Blocker couldn't be much simpler; the downloadable application clocks in at a little under 2.5MB, and installation follows the usual Windows path. Once installed, the software requests that you create a master password and password secret question, with the usual warnings about configuration and uninstallation problems if you forget both.
We-Blocker uses a mixture of blacklists and word filtering to work out whether or not to block pages. The word filter is quite robust, as words are assigned a severity, and it's possible to set one of three different severity levels before a page can be blocked. The software does warn you that there's likely to be a performance hit for having word filtering switched on. Its blacklist categories cover Pornography, Adult Subjects, Violence/Criminal Activity, Hate/Persecution, Drugs/Alcohol, Gambling, Weaponry and a single 'User Defined Category' field, although we were unable to locate anywhere in the software where this user defined category could be created. It's also got user-defined white and blacklists for fine-tuning applications. We-Blocker doesn't go as far in revealing its blacklists as Net Nanny, but it does offer a semi-compromise; you can search on the We-Blocker site for individual URLs to ascertain if they're in the blocked sites list.
In operation, we did hit a few snags. Firstly, We-Blocker only works with Internet Explorer; switching over to alternate browsers such as Opera or Mozilla Firebird allowed us free and easy access to whatever content we wanted. Blocked sites are accompanied by an audio file that says 'blocked' for every infringement it discovers, which can become a touch cacophonous. By default, We-Blocker will head for its own site rather than give a full explanation of why a site was blocked. It points to the master user's logs for reference, but we often found those logs to give little indication either.
Remember how we mentioned that We-Blocker is free? Well, it is and it isn't. You can use it for as long as you like, as long as you're happy with intermittent pop-up ads requesting that you donate towards its further development. Donate, and the package disables the pop-up self-advertising; your tolerance for this 'feature' may vary, but we're not keen on it in supposedly 'free' software.
We-Blocker's filtering technology, like many of the filters we've reviewed here, performed best with sites containing pornographic material. Like most of the rest of our filters, it failed to block one particularly disturbing image site, but otherwise picked matters sexual with a fair degree of accuracy. It initially blocked access to the AIDS quilt information site, which may worry some users; turning the word filter off was enough to gain us access to the site.
In other areas that it purportedly blocks, We-Blocker was much less effective, especially if the word filtering aspect of the software is disabled. Like most other filters, it had problems with the use of frames in the Klu Klux Klan's web site, and with the word filter off it completely failed all of our hate site tests. It fared slightly better for gambling sites, again performing best when it could fall back onto its word filter.
We-Blocker also demonstrated beautifully the problem with needing to fall back on a word filter, as a site we tested that contained many filtering 'bad words' (but in reality is harmless) was blocked every time by the package, but passed once word filtering was switched off.
Ultimately, We-Blocker scores well with us for configuration flexibility and price, but is somewhat hobbled by the pop-up ad support, IE-only status and over-reliance on word filtering to keep itself safe. Like most filters that allow for user-defined black and white lists, it would be possible to build up We-Blocker into a very effective tool, given enough time.
We-Blocker 1.91
Company: We-Blocker
Price: Free via download
| Introduction | Editor's Choice | How we tested | |
| AllegroSurf | ChildSafe | ChildWebGuardian | ControlKids |
| CyberPatrol | Cybersitter | Net Nanny | WeBlocker |
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