What NEED does this meet?
1. Many web users get addicted to the net, especially to pornographic sites, and may want a foolproof way to block such sites.
2. Parents want to be sure that their children are not exposed to certain types of sites.
3. With legal action being taken against file sharers may PC ownres may want a foolproof way to block such sites.
A huge proportion of all web sites fall into categories that many users would want blocked.
Currently available web filtering is either not free or not effective easy to do so.
Product would also be effective for mobile phone web surfing
What is the APPROACH?
The key would be to have a free, simple & effective system available… something in the way the Grisoft virus filter works maybe.
A web filtering system with the following features would be useful:
- Free
- Constantly updated
- very difficult to un-install (this is really a key feature, but would possibly be seen as a negative by some users… maybe a 10 day unisntall waiting period would be useful)
- Does not slow normal web surfing
- Reports available which will be sent to the software installer / a nominated email address
What are the BENEFITS to people?
The overall benefit of such a system would be to everyones benefit, especially if it got widely adopted (if it got to ‘critical mass’). Huge time saving if such sites were not visited.
Porn sites can also damage some peoples relationships
Most such sites are exploitative, some are actually illegal, and none really have any redeeming features.
The argument of ‘free speech’ is the only defense they have to allow them to be available to all web users, but if the PC owner wants to filter them out it is currently not easy to do so.
What is the COMPETITION?
There are many similar services, but no really effective & popular one
Wide open market for an effective product.
Could be easily supported by advertising.
What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?
Basically need a couple of good dotnet programmers, and then the key would be to have good effective viral marketing to get to critical mass.
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April 7th, 2006 at 10:40am
1. Many web users get addicted to the net, especially to pornographic sites, and may want a foolproof way to block such sites.
I would have thought the LAST people who are going to want to use your service are people that are addicted to porn.
3. With legal action being taken against file sharers may PC ownres may want a foolproof way to block such sites.
File sharing isn’t generally done via sites, but through peer to peer networks. If you don’t want to use them just don’t download the software. It’s not something people do accidentally.
Which leaves 2
2. Parents want to be sure that their children are not exposed to certain types of sites.
Of course, this is true but there are hundreds of people all offering services similar to this .. for example AOL. I don’t get what would make yours different?
April 9th, 2006 at 12:07am
Thanks for your comment Richard
The differences are
– that it would be free (AOLs service isnt and most of the free ones available are crap)
– very difficult to uninstall (family oriented, or anywhere where there are multiple users of one PC). How to do this is not obvious — if it was someone would be doing so already! — but theres got to be a way… maybe install in the same way as ome virus filter products
And many parents are very worried about kids accessing porn sites / P2P sites so there is a huge market out there.
May 9th, 2006 at 2:55pm
There are plenty of people with addictions that are quite happy to persist with them, or at least not ready to confront them. But there are also many that are trying hard to quit but don’t have the self-discipline to do so. Hence, it’s possible to ask to be barred in some pubs and I think some betting shop chains and casinos offer a voluntary life ban to people that ask for it. The same principle could apply to porn.
There are four general approaches to content control:
1. Restrict physical access to the device.
2. Filter against a specific whitelist (permitted) or blacklist (prohibited).
3. Filter “intelligently” based on a real-time assessment of the content.
4. No filtering, but log everything and send the log to relevant people to make the user accountable after the fact.
I’d say a combination of 1 and 4 is best for children.
4 is probably best for an adult porn addict that’s trying to quit with the help of a partner/spouse/buddy.
3 is always likely to be severely flawed in practice.
2 implies that someone has to be compiling the lists of permitted or banned sites. This is time-consuming and therefore expensive. If you want users to do this themselves so that they can collectively build a list, they’d have to visit all the bad sites to do so – which would defeat the object.
So, some kind of logging proxy is needed. For children, I’d say put the computer in a family room, not the bedroom, and read their logs. Don’t give them a phone with net access.
Generally when tackling bad behaviour, I’d prefer social solutions over technological/mechanical ones.
November 9th, 2006 at 9:33pm
I think it’s a great idea. Please make this happen.
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