From the category archives:

Porn Blocker

Two Most Popular Porn Blocker Software

by Kim on April 15, 2010 in Porn Blocker · 0 Comments

Nowadays most computers and internet access have become not merely luxuries but necessities in the performance of work and school-related activities such as homework, projects, reports, and online classes. And because the Internet now plays a huge role in our daily lives we should likewise understand that the internet has its own pitfalls, most especially for children.

Now unless you’re willing to look over your child’s shoulder when every time they go online, you need a program to make sure that your child isn’t being exposed to pornographic materials from the myriad of adult sites out there. What you need therefore is a porn blocker or filter software, that is reliable, flexible and has established a reputation for great protection.

There are scores of internet filter software out in the market today, most of them perform basically similar tasks but some of them perform them better than others. Allow me to identify the 2 most popular software being used by families and companies today: Net Nanny and Safe Eyes.

Net Nanny is probably one of the most recognizable names in content filtering software. Established in 1994, net Nanny was purchased by ContentWatch in 2007 and still remains at the forefront of filtering technology. When first installed, you can identify 8 categories which Net Nanny can filter, so if your primary concern is blocking pornography then just choose the appropriate category and Net Nanny will block access to these sites and pictures for you. You can also restrict access to other types of sites which you may deem inappropriate for your child such as gambling sites, particular chatrooms, and even online gaming based on ESRB ratings.

If you’ve got children of different ages sharing a single computer, you can create multiple accounts for your operating system and create different settings for different users based on your preference. This means that you’re teenager can play online games on his or her account while their younger siblings may not.

Safe-Eyes is another recognized leader in the filtering software industry. Similar to Net Nanny, it can block access to pornographic sites and images which are inappropriate to children and monitor all internet activity in a particular computer. The program can even send you a message via email or SMS if someone under a particular profile is attempting to access a blocked or restricted site. Safe Eyes can also restrict the time a particular user has access to the internet based either on a particular timeframe (say 6pm-8pm) or a total number of hours allowed per day.

Net Nanny and Safe Eyes are the most popular filter programs in the market today because of their effectiveness in blocking access not only to pornographic sites, materials and other questionable content, but also for the ease of their use and flexibility of protection but this doesn’t mean that they may be the best for you. If you’re only seeking porn blockers then maybe internet filter software may be offering too many features which you won’t be using anyway. Also, you should remember that there are programs out there which will require you to pay monthly fees to maintain your protection or to update your database so be sure to find one that suits not only your requirements but also your budget.

OpenDNS and Close Your Home to Pornography

by Kim on March 31, 2010 in Free Software, Popup Blocker, Porn Blocker · 0 Comments

Remember the good old days when adult magazines and videos were so hard to acquire they were basically considered contraband and sold at exorbitant prices? The time when young people had to go out of their way just to find get a peek? Well those days are long past as the growth of the internet has also seen the increasing proliferation of adult sites and ease at which these can be accessed. It is therefore valid for parents to be concerned about what their children are seeing over the internet.

If you’re a parent with such concerns, then you may consider using porn blockers on your home computers. But before we go any further you should understand one thing: blockers are not 100% effective for a number of reasons; the foremost is because the determined can find a way to circumvent blocker programs using means which can be considered tedious, agonizing and time consuming. So basically, what these blockers do is make it very difficult for people to access sites with adult content.

One of the most popular methods of blocking adult sites and content over the internet is by using the OpenDNS service. DNS (Domain Naming System) is basically a labeling system which transforms IP addresses into the website hostnames. Upon signing up for the OpenDNS service, users are asked to configure their Internet DNS to use the OpenDNS servers instead of their Internet Service Providers. Once signed up, the users are then able to configure their internet settings to filter a variety of categories, most notably sites and imagines which contain adult content.

The result is that when users, for example children, attempt to access pornographic sites, the OpenDNS servers block these sites and displays a message saying that the site is not allowed based on OpenDNS settings. OpenDNS is great because it prevents even the most basic display of search results from sites with adult content and because its free.
OpenDNS also has a blacklist system where users can input sites which they think fall under a certain category. This means that if you find a site which you think contains adult content, you can petition to have this added to the blacklist of sites to be blocked. It should be noted that before the said site can be added to a category, it has to first be approved by a number of other registered users. The consensus based system allows for its users to input new site to update the categories.

As great as it sounds though, allow me to reiterate that there is no 100% effective methods of filtering or blocking and Open DNS its fair share of weaknesses. Because DNS is domain based, it uses keywords of domain names to identify whether a site is to be filtered or not. In the case of pornography, files and pictures can be easily available from sites which don’t normally provide such content. Also, the number of adult sites continues to grow and new sites are being set up almost every day, hence the categories and listed sites may not be up-to-date.

OpenDNS is an excellent means of filtering the access of data in the internet for your children but remember it can be bypassed and what is needed is to use OpenDNS in conjunction with other monitoring software to better ensure that even if you can’t absolutely restrict all access to pornography, you can at least make it down-right difficult to do so.

Tagged as: dns, open dns, opendns, porn filter

Free Porn Blockers: Do They Work?

by Kim on March 5, 2010 in Free Software, Porn Blocker · 0 Comments

There is one thing that I have on my computer that I’m eternally grateful to have. Before I had porn blocker on my computer, I would sometimes stumble upon a site that had so many popups that my computer would freeze and must be rebooted. This is always bad news, and would make me quit angry. Usually when this happened, I was doing research for an article and I would lose everything I had written if I had not saved. Popups taught me to save my work more frequently, but that doesn’t mean I want deal with them either.

You can get plenty of popup blockers out there and many are free. I have two on my computer, and they both came with free toolbars that I use regularly. To get porn blocker this way, make absolutely certain you are only accepting downloads from sources you trust and you read through the terms of use to learn if they track your Internet activities from you downloading the toolbar. They do deal with the popups though, if you trust the source, I encourage you to get them this way.

Even the fastest computers can get bogged down with popups, and if you wander about the wrong site, you will be a bit shocked at what you see in the ads presented to you. It is especially important to have porn blocker on your desktop if you have children. If they go on to a site that has rather nasty pop ups, this isn’t something you want your children to see. Even if they have nothing related to porn activities, you might get porn pop ups anyway. Don’t take a chance.

You may as well buy porn blocker but I have never found the need to do so. The free ones that I have on my computer work 99% of times. This is good enough for me, and I am pleased with how well they operate. Those who produce these ads are always searching for ways to get around pop up blockers so you should definitely look for updates for your blockers if there are any available. That is the most effective way to keep one step ahead from the ads that may disable or shut down your computer.

Tagged as: free pop up blocker, free popup blocker, free porn blocker, Pop Up Blocker, Popup Blocker