Orange offers free security and parental control software

Parental controls and the safety of children online is a hot topic at the
moment, and while last week saw a confusing time when no-one was sure whether
parental controls would be opt-in or opt-out for new customers at four major
providers, Orange quietly announced an offer to give
customers free access to controls for 12 months.

Broadband providers offering some form of anti-virus control is nothing new,
but Orange are offering both Anti Virus and parental controls via McAfee
AntiVirus Plus 2012 + Parental controls free for 12 months for both existing
and new customers on Orange’s home broadband services. The second 12 months
will be half price if people decide to continue to use it.

Last week saw a lot of discussion on network level filters, which carry the
advantage of filtering everything from desktop’s and laptops, to WiFi enabled
phones, tablets and games consoles. Alas, in a household with a varying range
of ages these can often be very restrictive, which is where controls that run
on the computer itself can be more useful. The correct solution is very much
down to the individuals choice at this time, though one can envisage the
situation arising when mandatory network based controls are applied. Whether
this happens in the UK depends a lot on how individuals and those responsible
for children in their care decide to manage internet access for children.

The Get Safe Online
website provides advice for parents, carers and teachers, and includes a
subsection dedicated to Internet
content filtering.

Interestingly PC Pro has an article covering how McAfee manage its
parental controls and site categorisation, which is a small team of five to ten
people who review a site and set its category appropriately, with another
member of the team reviewing it. The article highlights issues such as only
part of a site requiring blocking, or dynamic content resulting in a site being
blocked due to one short term item at the time of reviewing. This McAfee list
is what BT and Sky currently use and it is not publicly available for download
– the simple reason being it would negate a lot of the work.

The McAfee system does have an appeals process, but how a site would spot
whether it is being blocked incorrectly is another issue that would rely on
user feedback or spotting a big drop in traffic. While there is good reason for
the IWF block list to remain private, for general site classification, there is
perhaps a case for some form of peer review. A centrally managed list would at
first seem a good idea, as more resources could be used to create a more
responsive system that is more widely used, but the danger there is that with a
single list it might be too easy to influence categorisation.

The whole debate around content filtering shows to some extent how deeply
ingrained internet use is now in the UK, and with the website Parent Port launching, it
will be interesting to see whether the concerns raised by the recent Bailey Review of the Commercialisation and Sexualisation of
Childhood are bourne out by complaints and comments to Parent Port. There
is one concern with Parent Port at this time, and it may be addressed in the
near future, and that is there is no obvious path for people to complain about
online content. Parent Port currently acts as an aggregator for various
traditional media bodies, with little scope for complaining about an online
blog, messaging service or website unless it is a video game, film or
advert.