Filter Objectionable Content on the Net

For parents across the world, the internet is as much a bane as it is a boon, thanks to a massive presence of vices such as online predators and pornography among other things. With around 260 porn sites being registered everyday and 25 per cent of the search queries being porn related according to an international study, it is imperative to keep young children away from this growing menace. With the boom in internet penetration and the familiarity of kids with technology, the need for blocking pornographic material is high.

NetDog Internet Porn Filter 3.9.2

This is a very easy to use Porn Blocker which is light on the system and works very effectively. It can be downloaded from http://tinyurl.com/ykkk6ha

Using the Filter

The user interface of the software is quite simple. It is divided into two URL lists: one for Always Blocked Websites and the other for Great Websites. You can add URLs to the list of Always Blocked sites or add a keyword using wildcard characters like asterisk (*) or question mark (?) along with words in case one is not sure of the complete URL. Adding and Deleting URLs pretty straight forward. By ticking the Block All option, you can further filter surfing to only those sites that are mentioned in the Great Website URL list.

Setting a URL banned list in NetDog

Output

The software works quite well and blocks all the words in the URL list. As soon as the URL word matches the word from the Blocked URL list, the website does not load.

PicBlock 3

NetDog only allows you to filter content based on keywords, but pornographic images still pop up on our screens. To prevent such images from showing up, use PicBlock.

Installation

The software can be downloaded from http://www.cinchworks.com/download.html. Installation is quick and requires a system reboot for the software to start working properly. It lodges itself in the system tray and will be turned on as soon as your computer starts. Options can be accessed from the tray icon.

Configuring PicBlock 3

The main tab in the Settings menu of PicBlock is the Configuration tab. To get PicBlock working, check the Enable Pic- Block option. It has options for setting the sensitivity levels of the blocking images, by clicking on the radio buttons indicating Mild, Normal and Strict. Advanced Filtering allows you to add more options to filtering like face detection, blocking web pages with explicit words etc. Many a times the software may block images which are perfectly harmless. To prevent this the user can Unblock those web sites either by right clicking on the PicBlocker icon in the system tray and selecting Unblock content or use a keyboard shortcut like [Alt] + [F12] or [Ctrl] + [F12]

The security settings in PicBlock.

URL Lists

This enables the user to set certain URLs as safe or dangerous in the URL Whitelist and URL Blacklist tab respectively. Using these tabs the user can set certain URLs which he wants to allow or block according to his needs. The list of URLs can be saved or another list can be imported as well using the Export and Add & Import buttons. Apart from URLs there is another tab called Words Blacklist which allows the user to block webpages based on the appearance of words on it.

Security

Since this software is meant to prevent the visibility of pornographic images, and it allows one to unblock restricted sites or images, a Security tab is provided to password protect actions. You (as a parent) can set an administrator password, so that your kids have no control over making any changes in the settings. By checking on the options, the enter password prompt may appear while unblocking content, viewing logs, accessing settings, disabling PicBlock among other things. This tab also has a Silent mode setting which prevent the pop ups from PicBlock when a site or image is blocked.

Performance

The blocked images will appear as pixelated areas. Sometimes, you will have to unblock perfectly normal images though.