Product Review: Webroot’sChildsafe Internet Monitoring and Filtration Utility
By Mitchell Levine

It’s been said that the dangerous neighborhoods of the city of Los Angeles are even more dangerous than their counterparts in New York, not because they are any more inherently dangerous, but simply because they don’t appear to be so. Hazardous neighborhoods in this city make themselves immediately obvious as such. The Palm trees and perpetual sunshine of the West Coast often seem to disguise what would be readily apparent in our urban environment.

To me, that’s a valuable metaphor for the Internet. While being a powerful tool for education and enlightenment, the Information Superhighway can be just as much of a threat as the most dangerous sections of our city. Unfortunately, due to its multimedia-oriented presentation, as well as the typically non-threatening situations in which the technology supporting it is accessed, like the California Southland, the Web can mask the hazards it may manifest.

What can a parent or teacher do to help deal with this problem? The answers in the past have been double-edged. The standard formula for security on the Internet has been filtration, either by pre-packaged software, or by utilizing so-called “family sites,” which do a censor’s job for them and only allow previously-approved content to be accessed. But this solution also causes about as many problems as it solves, and it does not even solve those problems well. Because of the exponential proliferation of adult or child-unfriendly sites, keeping filters current is an extraordinarily time and resource-consuming challenge, which even full-time workers cannot completely meet. As many articles in education trade publications have already testified, the same software filters often actually prevent legitimate uses, robbing classes of the benefits of our school’s technological investment. A standard program which indiscriminately blocks any site that contains the conceivably inappropriate word “breast,” may make it impossible to research health care, romantic poetry, or medieval lore.

Webroot Software’s Childsafe offers an alternate approach. The Childsafe utility acts as a monitoring function. Operating silently in the background, the program collects information about the Internet sites and facilities that the monitored system visits and uses, and provides reports which clearly display usage. After receiving the program CD, I was able to install the software in approximately four minutes, and in less than 10, I was able to get a system usage report, which startled me with its comprehensiveness. The report screens quickly gave me complete information on the trial Internet run I made on my laptop, including URLs, screenshots, analysis statistics, and even keystrokes entered. In addition, Childsafe also possesses a basic filtration capacity, blocking any selected URL from use.

By making clear that any and all Internet functions can and will be monitored, and blocking specific known inappropriate sites, teachers and system administrators can effectively ensure voluntary complicity with existing usage guidelines. And, the capability to establish violations certainly and accurately is the key to implementing informed discipline. With a minimum of installation hassles and a very reasonable price, Webroot’s Childsafe v5.0 will help New York City schools reap the benefits of the information technology we have already plugged in.

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