-----Original Message-----
Have set content advisor to lowest levels, enabled
settings with password. Have restarted both the browser
and windows but content advisor is not working. Can get
into prono sites without Content Advisor asking me for
the password. In MSN.com doing a search using a
expletive, NightSurf comes up without content advisor
asking me to enter the password.
<snip>
Do you have the option "Users can see sites that have no
rating" enabled? If so then obviously any user can visit
a site that doesn't bother to rate itself.
Do you really expect porn peddlers to follow a standard
(to voluntary provide a ratings file) that would limit
their audience? You expect morality from porn peddlers?
Oh, yeah, like the police stations have lines of people
voluntarily confessing to their crimes. This scheme
assumes a site will provide a ratings file. That's like
asking burglars to tattoo on their foreheads, "I rob
houses", or those that are HIV positive to tattoo on
their foreheads, "Sex with me is lethal".
It is likely on the Advanced tab that you are not
subscribed to any ratings bureau, so you are relying on
the web site to rate themself. Back on the General tab
you will find a button to go find some ratings schemes,
like ICRA (which provides a description of how to install
their scheme at
http://www.icra.org/faq/contentadvisor/setup/). However,
unless someone points to a KB or tech article from
Microsoft that says different, that is just a ratings
scheme and still requires the web site to actually rate
themself. Microsoft says, "When you enable the Content
Advisor, Internet Explorer 4 reads special tags placed in
the HTML code of Web pages by content providers to
determine whether that page meets your criteria for
suitable content." I don't know that Content Advisor has
changed its method since then. I believe the web site
can also create a rating file that the browser can read,
but obviously the contents of that file were written by
THAT web site owner. It isn't some encrypted file that
was provided by an independent ratings bureau which would
be violated and detected as such if the web site owner
ever changed it. That's why you probably want to DISABLE
the option "Users can see sites that have no rating". If
the site won't rate itself then don't let the kids go
there. Of course, if the site does rate itself then it
can say it is a pure as driven white snow and still be a
porn site.
I think now you get the picture that the voluntary rating
scheme sucks. It's stupid. It has the baddies smacking a
red-dye stamp on their forehead say, "I'm a bad site by
this much (and then provides a rating of how much they
are bad)". Anyone using Content Advisor is hoping the
big bad world out there will actually identify themselves
as bad. If you are unwilling to take the time to
actually guide your kids (and monitor or log their
violations and punish them for those infractions) then
get some real web content filtering. A simple Google
search will reveal how to reset the Content Advisor's
password so any kid can then get in and change its
settings or disable it.
If you allow physical access to the host where is the web
content filtering then the kids are going to get around
it (so the clue here is that you need to put the web
content filtering somewhere upstream of the kid's
computer). However, how are you going to prevent the
kids from using public proxies to do a runaround to your
web content filtering? Those aren't rated and that is
where the connection from your kids' host is made (to
then go to the target "bad" site). Disabling the option
to let users visit unrated sites (so all sites have to be
rated) might help but I'm sure there are enough public
proxies around that gives themselves a glistening clean
rating (because they have no idea to where the user will
tell their proxy to connect). I don't censor myself so
I'm not going to proffer recommendations on a type of
software that deludes parents that their kids won't
figure out how to get around it.
