World Wide Watch - Government Activity - International Pages - Internet/Web/Online Service Information - Brief Article

Electronics Times, March 5, 2001

Bookmarked by nick.flaherty@dial.pipex.com

The conviction of 12 men of the Wonderland child pornography ring once again throws the spotlight on ways to protect children using the Internet.

There are ways to do this using software tools such as Netnanny [www.netnanny.com] and Cybersitter [www.cybersitter. com], which are set to get European approvals though a sort of `kite mark' as part of a #63m eContent scheme [europa.eu.int/ISPO/econtent/i_Welcome.html].

A new Internet service provider, V21 in Southampton [www.V21game.co.uk], is offering a family-friendly ISP service by centralising the control of content in the Internet access hardware. It uses a search engine that overwrites data in the Internet Explorer browser to get it to omit all adult material at all times and from all sources.

When a site is entered, the browser checks all of it - text, picture and video names and hyperlinks - against files stored locally and if there is obscene material, the site is barred.

These local files are updated from the central database every 4 to 6s to keep up to date. This is only possible by having unlimited access through BT's Friaco scheme which is finally coming into use.

But this of course raises the issue of who decides what you can access. Some of the content protection programs have come under fire for not allowing access to sites dealing with breast cancer or sex education.

Indeed, using some of these tools, this column would not be accessible on the Web. The issue is choice, says Baigent. There is a local password for parents to let children access particular sites, and there is an undeletable, easily accessed, history file so that parents can see where that password has been used. The browser can also prevent other browsers being installed.

V21 is also barring access to news groups and chat rooms, and offers child-friendly e-mail that removes obscene words from incoming and outgoing e-mails, replaces them with a set word, and automatically sends a warning to the sender. The sender can be barred too.

V21 plans to launch in May for #14.99 a month.

All the publicity over the Wonderland group has also led to ISP Demon [www.demon. co.uk] removing newsgroups suspected of being used by paedophiles for sharing material. Some other ISPs regard this as a rather cynical move; they say they report illegal activity happening on their sites and this avoids driving the illegal activity underground.

The UK's Internet Watch Foundation [www.iwf.org] has also hit back at accusations that it does not do enough, pointing to its hotline which has led to prosecutions in Estonia and South Africa, as well as arrests by Greater Manchester and Staffordshire police last year.

Copyright: United Business Media Ltd.