Internet Filtering Programs: Shortcomings and What They Mean to Parents

The idea of an Internet filtering program is exciting to parents concerned about the safety of their families' younger web surfers. A software program can block kids from intentionally or accidentally accessing sites that contain inappropriate content.

The online pornography business is a massive cash cow and access to adult materials is easy for even the most novice young computer user. Meanwhile, the Internet's status as the world's ultimate information repository means that there is other information available that parents may not want their kids to be reading. It's no wonder filtering programs are becoming increasingly popular.

The programs work on a basic system. They use a database of words that are associated with inappropriate content and block a browser's ability to access those sites containing the "bad words." Many of the better programs allow parental manipulation of the data, allowing them to choose categories of information to block and/or to make manual adjustments to the keyword lists.

It sounds like an elegant solution to the problem. However, it suffers from a few weaknesses.

First, Internet filtering programs can be too restrictive. In many cases, the algorithms used are rudimentary and maybe triggered by the use of certain words, regardless of the context in which they are used. Filtering programs may stymie access to perfectly legitimate resources.

For instance, a filtering program may block all pages including the word "sex." That might make a parent breathe a deep sigh of relief, but it also means that a child won't be able to access biology materials discussing sex ratios within insect species. They won't be seeing adult images, but they may also miss an insightful article about cable television syndication for their social studies class because it mentions "Sex and the City."

One should be wary of filtering programs whose methods can restrict access only by damaging the overall value of the web significantly.