Does parental control software work?
Posted on 24 Dec 2009 at 00:00 “If a user tries to access a brand-new web page, the Cloud service rates it in less than a third of a second based on multiple parameters and input from other technology providers, such as AV engines, Google feeds and spam content,” he claims. Yet despite all this clever technology, it’s still far from guaranteed to thwart the smartest of teenagers. Rik Ferguson is senior security advisor at Trend Micro, and a father of three. He’s remarkably frank in admitting that new blocking methods “encourage the child to find creative ways around the restriction”. Anonymised, free proxy servers are the most common way around the filters. “There are 1.5 million pages relating to proxy bypass,” warns Colin McKeown, director of E-Safe Education, adding that most of these proxy technologies will “get round many of the default parental products in operating systems and antivirus-based security products”. They actually place the child at greater risk of identity theft and
