You may have obvious concerns. How do I protect my child? Can I receive information devoid of stuff I do not want my child to see? My child is becoming a computer buff, is it safe to leave him alone on the Net? Are chat rooms free of influences that I would like to keep away from my home? I don’t know much about computers — is my child cheating me by going to sites that I would not allow him to visit? The answer to none of these questions is simple. But certainly there are techniques that coupled with expressing your parenting concerns to the child could help.

But any meaningful outcome is only possible with the active participation of your Internet service provider (ISP). So, in short you have to make an effort to block the muck at your individual level and at the same time persuade the ISP to use a technique called "filtration" to block material that could prove harmful to youngsters.

The number of unrestricted adult sites that have mushroomed in recent times is beyond any numerical count. Every legal or illegal site on the Internet that needs any financial support for sustenance easily finds itself a sponsor from among the countless adult sites vying with each other to attract clients, who, after an initial free trial, pay through their nose for their addiction. Therefore, despite being a great resource for children, schools, families and business establishments, the Internet has come to contain a large amount of inappropriate content for these target audiences.

With the increase of obscene material on the Net, people’s concern towards it has also increased manifold. As a consequence of mounting pressure by the lobby against the rise of pornography material, the Judicial Magistrate, Pune, held Rediff.com responsible for offence under Section 292 (distribution of pornographic material) and 109 (abetment), in what has come to be known as a landmark judgment pronounced on November 27 last year. Those involved could face a two-year imprisonment. The complainant, a Pune student, Abhinav Bhatt, had alleged in his petition that the search engine of the company has been providing links to pornographic Web sites even though such sites could be blocked.

In a parallel development, the Judicial Magistrate also summoned Rajesh Jain, managing director of IndiaWorld, R. Ramaraj, chief executive officer of Satyam Infoway, and George Zacharias, president and chief operating officer of Satyam Infoway, to appear before the court following a petition filed against them alleging that their respective companies were responsible for providing links to pornographic Web sites.

A serious concern raised by those who find nothing objectionable in pornographic sites is that any kind of restriction on the Net would amount to censorship that is neither desirable nor acceptable in a medium that foremost stands for freedom. A good way to address these concerns while avoiding censoring the entire Internet lies at the end of the ISP who can offer a filtered Internet access in addition to the normal unfiltered access.

But at the same time filtering the Internet can be a tricky business, and one which could require more time, technology and money than an ISP has available. Filtering can be addressed in two ways — inclusion and exclusion.

Inclusion filtering is designed to allow the Internet users access only to particular "allowed" sites, which have been ‘included’ in a specified list. In this the URLs or IP addresses of the sites that need to be allowed are fed in the ISP server and this blocks all sites that are not included. Since there are far too many "good" sites as compared to the "bad" ones, this kind of filtering is not very practical.

Exclusion filtering, on the other hand, allows access to any Internet site not on the list of objectionable sites. The primary advantage of exclusion filtering is that the lists only need to include objectionable sites, and, thus, can be much smaller. Also, unrated sites are presumed innocent until found objectionable.

Keyword blocking, packet filtering, and URL blocking have emerged as the three major methods of Internet filtering that can be used in combination or by themselves.

Keyword blocking is a process in which a site is scanned for specific keywords as it is opened. Whenever a site is found to be containing any objectionable keyword, the access is blocked. But in this kind of filtration if a search is made using the keyword "sex," all sites containing "Middlesex" would be blocked; similarly the keyword "breast" would also block sites on breast cancer. Therefore, it is impractical to use keyword blocking.

Besides, ever since TCP/IP overcame shell access to the Net, much of the objectionable material is in the form of pictures that cannot be blocked with the help of keyword filtration. "Flesh-tone filters," which sense pictures by the colour in them, has so far been unsuccessful.

Packet filtering, on the other hand, denies access by allowing or blocking requests to specific IP addresses that define individual Web sites. Advantages of packet filtering include speed and simplicity. However, packet filtering does not allow for fine-grained control and cannot be used with some of the newer Web serving innovations, such as IP-independent virtual hosts. Besides, the newer Web servers can host multiple sites using one IP address and port number, making this filtering only partially effective.

Out of these three, URL blocking is the most powerful method for filtering Web sites. It works by comparing the full URL of the requested page to a list of URLs, URL prefixes, and/or regular expressions. This allows fine-grained control over filtering. In this kind of filtering one objectionable area of the Web site can be blocked while allowing another area to be accessed.

While the filtering methods discussed so far can primarily be implemented by the ISP, but at the individual level, too, there are several software available that work on the database-dependent approach which keeps them current by adding or deleting sites that contain objectionable material.

Besides pressurising the ISP into implementing various filtration techniques, software that act as cyber guards can be installed on home, school, or workplace computers or clients. Attempts have been made to enact legislation holding the ISP responsible for allowing any objectionable material leaking to the client, but in the USA, too, such legislations have yielded little result. The worst part of the situation is that despite awareness of the impending danger there is nothing much you can do to protect your kids, whose curiosity can lead them into the realms of the adult world sooner than desired.

There are several software available on the Net (see list in box) that can prevent access to unwanted sites to a large extent. But if your child is hell bent on tricking the software, there is nothing to prevent him. To do the least you can install one of these on your personal systems.

Techniques adopted by the promoters of adult sites are so aggressive to hook on a prospective viewer that one really does not have to look for adult stuff. Hardly a day passes without any e-mail in the inbox with a seductive invitation, luring the reader to an adult site link. God help you if you get tempted or fall for the offer of receiving material through e-mail and sign in for the site’s mailing list. You will be flooded with "x" rated material. Anyone visiting an adult site is often cajoled into giving out his e-mail address, an attempt is also made to extract his credit card number; if he succumbs to either, he is doomed. Software like Cyber Nanny, Net Petrol and Net Police can, however, act as a deterrent.

Using browser tools for check

Partial security can be added by using the options in the Web browser. If you are using the Internet Explorer, after opening the browser from Tools> Internet Options> Security, you can customise your security levels. Here you can set levels for the Internet, Local intranets, Trusted sites and Restricted sites. After highlighting these four areas one by one, you can choose between the various available options. In the restricted and trusted sites you can even put in the URLs of the site that you want to ban or allow to the user. In the Internet option, you can select security levels between High, Medium, Medium-low and Low.

Also in the Content section (Tools> Internet Options> Content), you can enable or disable sites containing certain language and other information relating to nudity, sex or violence. This allows you to select between five options ranging between "inoffensive slang," "mild expletives," "moderate expletives," "obscene gestures" and "explicit and crude" language. Here you can also add the approved sites. The Content adviser settings can also be password protected, so that no one can change the access levels. Similar features are also available in other browsers like Netscape, Opera, etc.

Unfortunately, there is no one foolproof method to make the Net a secure place for surfing. Various methods have to be combined to make the Internet a truly pleasurable experience for the entire family.