SEARCH TIPS

How to stop your kids from finding offensive material on the Web

Pandia is currently betatesting a new search portal for kids and teenagers at http://www.pandia.com/kids/. Our own search engine for kids is not up and running yet, but you can see where we are heading.

One major problem when designing search services for kids is how to avoid offensive material.

The Web is like most bookstores or libraries, it is full of material that is not suitable for children. Well, there is actually content out there that is not suitable for anyone. However, parents, politicians and experts disagree strongly on what is harmful and what is not. Educational ideologies and religious and ethical standpoints also vary.

For instance: from a Norwegian standpoint the American obsession with four letter swearwords is nothing but amazing. Norwegian broadcasters do not normally beep out words like "****!" or "&%$#!"

The fact is that as soon as you allow children to surf the Web on their own, there is no way you can safely stop them from accessing offensive material.

To give an example: The Pandia Plus directory is based on the Open Directory, a catalog edited by volunteers from all over the world. We have taken out the adult category. Still, there may be other non-p*o*r*no*graphic Web sites that the ODP editors find useful and informative, but that some visitors may find offensive. Moreover, if you use the Pandia Metasearch engine, there are no filters to sort out offensive terms. We do not like p*o*r*n*ography, but nor do we like censorship.

It is certainly true that other search engines have such filters (like Google and AllTheWeb), but they are far from perfect. Moreover, if you can turn them off, your child can too. After all, in most cases the kids in the family are more Internet savvy than the parents.

This is why we recommend that grown ups accompany children when they are surfing and teach them what to avoid, in the same way as you would tell them to stay away form certain parts of town.

Checking the surfing habits of your children

If you read the browser help files, you will find that there are ways to map which sites the users of this particular PC have visited during a certain period.

You may for instance check the browsers "History" file. In the Internet Explorer you may select Window/History (or hit CTRL+H on a PC or Command+H on a Mac) to see a list of recently visited Web pages.

Alternatively you may open the browser's cache files to see recently downloaded pictures and pages. To find the folder/directory that contains these files, select Edit/Preferences/Advanced in the Explorer menu (this may vary from version to version and browser type to browser type). Select File/Open file in the browser to look at these files. You may, of course, also use graphics software to view these files.

The PC version of Internet Explorer may also "remember" the most recently used search keyword phrases entered into search engine search forms. It does so in order to help you type in the query. Start entering the first few letters of an offensive word, and you will soon see whether someone has used this PC searching for that particular term.

If you do use these methods to find out where your child has been, please tell him or her that you are going to do so. You won't gain their trust by spying on them in secret. Remember, children are most likely to do what you do, not what you tell them to. Moreover, if they catch you surveying their surfing habits, they will find ways to turn these features off.

Censorware

You may also use Net Nanny and other censorware content filters to sort out certain types of Web sites. Please note though that none of them are foolproof, and that some of them may ban sites your kid should be allowed to see.

T*i*t*s and h*o*o*t*e*r*s are birds -- really! -- although some of the software may actually ban this page as it contains these words! (Which is why we have masked them with stars.)

The proof

After having sent out this newsletter, we received the following mail:

From: System Attendant 
To: "'pandiapost
Subject: ScanMail Message: To Sender, sensitive content found and action t
	aken.
Date: Sun, 3 Mar 2002 15:56:44 -0500 
Status:  O

Trend SMEX Content Filter has detected sensitive content.

Subject = Pandia Post No. 12 Part 2 - on search engines and Web searching
Delivery Time = March 03, 2002 (Sunday) 15:56:42
Policy = Dirty Words
Action on this mail = Quarantine message

Warning message from administrator:
The Orvis Email server has detected language that is not permissible. If
internal: call the Vermont Help Desk to receive a copy of your Email.   If
external: Please review the sent E-mail message, remove words one could
consider unacceptable and resend.

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