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Mar 10, '11

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Product Review - Free Parental Control Bar

Ben Beck

Net Nanny is made by ContentWatch, my employers. The company is a for profit institution, and employs a good number of individuals that it pays well and that pay helps feed their families. We can't give Net Nanny away for free, or we'd all die. No money = no food = death. However, there are some companies out there that giveaway software because they don't need the money (or because they've monetized their free product in other ways). We salute those organizations. One such organization, the Website Rating and Advisory Council, has created a free web filter toolbar that you can add to Internet Explorer to enable safer searching. While our company does not make it a point to prop up competitors, we do see value in free tools, even ones that may compete with our own software. So, here's my review of the WRAAC's ParentalControlBar Internet Filter.

Installation:
Quick and easy. Your computer will continue to tell you that the program does not come from a trusted source. However, this is common with most software you try to install on a Microsoft Windows system - since we're telling you you can trust them, you can. Just click “run whenever you see that as an option. You'll be asked to enter a password and your email address. Very easy installation and I had the toolbar running in under 5 minutes.

First test:
So, I'm not a big pornographer myself. As such, my first test simply included me typing “playboy.com into the browser. Voila - blocked. It's nice that the block comes up with an override option, in case you feel the site is okay for yourself but not for the little ones. It also has an option to add the site to a white list, which would always let the site through in the future.

More extensive testing:
Tricky children may try to go through Google to get to their sites, instead of just typing the web address into the browser. So, my next test was to go to Google and search for “playboy. Blocked. No, not the search. The actual site “google.com was blocked. Hmm, guess it's because Google hasn't been living up to their “Do No Evil slogan as of late. Trying to navigate to bing.com - nope, they're blocked too. The reason for blocking is because these sites are “unlabeled. C'mon guys - two of the biggest sites on the web and you haven't categorized them?
Ultimately, however, the youngest of kids might not need access to search engines - they just need a couple fun, very child friendly sites, right? So, I'll test several Net Nanny suggested kid friendly sites see if they make it through:
- Nick.com - Blocked.
- BiologyInMotion.com - Blocked. Granted, this site does talk about bile, urine, and thyroid glands - maybe it should've been blocked. Really though, it made the Net Nanny safe sites list because it's full of fun and great tools to teach kids about biology.
- PBSKids.org - Blocked. Of any of the sites out there this should be classified as one of the most safe sites out there.
- All sites blocked - couldn't find one that wasn't.
It looks like their software doesn't come ready “out of the box. A quick check of their own website, ParentalControlBar.com, shows that even their own site is not getting through because it has a little social networking tool embedded which isn't on their categorized list. The settings are definitely going to need some tweaking.

Changing the control settings:
They've done a good job with the user interface. It's clean and not cluttered with too many options. There are three tabs in the settings window: allowed site list, blocked site list, basic site filters. For now, I don't want to put any sites into the allowed/blocked tabs. Going straight for the filter settings, of which there were just a few (thank goodness - free tools should be super simple because there isn't much buy in to actually learn the software). You can block or allow the following categories: unlabeled content, explicit sexual material, nudity/sexual material, violence, strong language, chat rooms & message boards, potentially harmful activities. The last four categories are all set to “allow out of the box. I'll check those real quick to see if there are any “violent sites that are being categorized:
- 666Gamer.com - found this site by searching Google (on a non-protected computer) for “best violent websites and then tried it on the protected computer - blocked as “unlabeled.
- umm - I don't follow the violence industry so I'm at a loss for more sites to try. I tested several that came back in Google search results and all were blocked as “unlabeled.
It looks like their “unlabeled category is blocking everything. Now I'll set the “unlabled to allow and try these same sites again. Okay, now that I've allowed the “unlabeled category everything is getting through. I've still got the sex/nudity filters turned on, but the toolbar didn't block playboy.com. Thus, I've come to the conclusion that their preset filter is garbage.

Broken Filter, What is it Good For?
It seems like this filter will still work well for the youngest of kiddies, when you just want to allow a few sites that you've previewed and added to the white list. For this you're going to have to manually type in a few sites you'd like to be available. My tests show that this feature works well.

You can also set up a black list - though this isn't recommended. Imagine trying to view the few hundred million sites out there to determine whether they were bad or not. There are millions of pornographic websites. You could try and download a black list that someone else has already compilied. Download the blacklist here. But when I go into the settings and look at the blacklist page, I'm let down once again. There is no way to import a list. There isn't even a way to copy/paste the list in. There is no way I'm manually typing in a few million domain names manually. Looks like a real blacklist is out. To the makers of the ParentalControlBar I'd suggest an “import blacklist feature as a first priority for development.

Circumventability
Even if you are a computer wiz and know how to lock down your user account so it won't allow for a new browser to be installed (which would kill this tool which doesn't work in Firefox or Chrome) you still can't lock down the “uninstall feature built into Internet Explorer. I'm not going to say how to uninstall this tool through IE, but it isn't tough - I imagine any kid could figure it out in about 12 seconds.

Conclusion
Super easy setup and nice user interface got my hopes up, only to be later shattered by the fact that this tool does not work as advertised. But heck, it's free. The only situation I would use this tool is if I was putting it on my family computer for my 5 year old to be able to surf one or two sites that I've pre-determined and loaded into the white list. For that kind of scenario I think this would work fine. Either way, mad props to the maker of this toolbar... if they keep developing it and tightening it up then it may be something I'll someday use.
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