Parental Control Software

Our society is evolving every day, but the best example of a speedy evolution is IT&C and the internet. The Internet offers a huge opportunity to find information from every field and also to communicate with people all over the world, crossing borders and reducing space. However the Internet does not belong to a person or an institution, so nobody can control everything that happens on the Internet, every site appeared and accessed by millions of users. And the truth is that there are a lot of unproper websites, especially for children and teenagers who are more vulnerable than grown-ups. That is why parents thought of a way of forbidding their children access to these kinds of websites: pornographic, radical, terrorist websites. This is what parental control software is about.

But parental control software is not used exclusively for the Internet. This software provides parents with automated tools while using different devices and services: e.g. it may alert a parent that his/her child's device is leaving school, it may help the parent establish the maximum speed of their child's car, or it may control the content of the websites visited. Parental controls are  optional features that may be included in digital television services, computer and video games, mobile phones and computer software. The parents have four tools that help them control their children and their actions: content filters, usage control, usage management tools and monitoring. Let's take them one at a time. Content filters are the first option of the parents when it comes to limiting their children's access to the internet unwanted and improper content. There are also some television stations that introduced a new technology to allow the parents to limit the access to some content.

This kind of parental control software applies to a wide range of topics from explicit songs and pictures to objectionable movies or magazines that can be bought online, thus you don't need to prove that you are an adult. The usage controls constrain a child to use a device during a specific time and for certain purposes. They are more and more sophisticated and can make the computer or tv turn off during a specific time of the day(for example when the child is supposed to be studying). Big companies approve of the parents' attitude and e.g. Ford has introduced a new software that limits the volume of the music that can be heard in the car. The monitoring devices include webcams that allow to see what your child is doing at home, even if you are at work and GPS technology that helps you locate your child.

There are several techniques that allow parents to control their children's access to certain internet websites and even block this access: add-on parental control software may monitor API in order to monitor the computer applications and interfere and block access when the child e.g. uses a word from the database of forbidden words when browsing or chatting. All these kinds of software usually provide means of blocking access by means of a user and password, in order to make the difference between parent and child and to prevent the child's attempt to break the interdiction. Some other parental control software may include a proxy server, that is the proxy server is the first to receive the requests for web content and not the web server intended. Proxy servers scan the content of the requested website and compare it with a data base of banned words or URLs and act accordingly: they either allow or deny access to that specific URL. However this method is easily bypassed, as the child can reconfigure his computer not to use the proxy, but to access Internet directly, thus avoiding banning.  

Computer Usage Management method is very different from the one presented above. That is this method teaches parents how to encourage their children to access educational sites by rewarding them with increasing gaming time. Teenagers like to be up-to-date with all kinds of gadgets and the latest versions of mobile phones. This is another problem,  because parents used to monitor only the computer at home.

But now the mobile phones have Internet access, so the parents needed a parental control software for them, too. Verizon was the first to come and help them in November 2007 as it offered content filters in June 2009 Apple Computer provided a built in mechanism on iPhone and iPhone Touch that blocked the children's access to certain websites and prevented them from downloading improper applications, according to the age of the user. Another step forward in parental web controls in the mobile phone area was made also in June 2009 when Surfbalance Kids browser for iPhone appeared on the market as a safe mobile web browser. But children will be children and they have always wanted to be free and get rid of their parents' restrictions and supervision. That is why many of them try tricking these parental control softwares to enable them with unlimited access to the internet. For example if the software that monitors their web activity is located within the computer they can reboot it from another media or use another operating system. So the parents should configure the BIOS on their computer not to allow booting from removable media and always require authentication.

Other methods are to use alternative protocols such as FTP or HTTPS, to make the search in a different language,  to use a proxy server or a circumventor. As a strong reaction to the successful attempts of bypassing filters and parental control software, many software companies are trying hard to bring new and better software that can help parents and children as well.There are a lot of companies that offer parental control software with different functionalities built-in. The most famous are Net Nanny, Ez Parental Control and Sental Parental Controls.