Parental controls

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This article is about computer options. For the television show, see Parental Control (TV series).

Parental controls are options, typically included in digital television services, computer and video games, or computer software used to access the Internet, that allows a parent to monitor or limit what a child can see or do. These controls may allow for the blocking of television stations using V-Chip technology, the removal of gore from computer games, the blocking of inappropriate websites, such as those containing pornography, or the automatic censoring of swearing. Several core technologies exist in creating Parental Controls for blocking sites on the Internet. The API method uses the operating system programming interface to gather information about foreign applications such as browsers and chat applications and then seize control of the foreign application when the information gathered triggers a positive in a database of banned words. This method is non-portable and application specific. Parental control software using API technology is limited to shutting down the offending application or in some cases a different action like deleting the offending words may or may not be possible depending on how the offending application is programmed. This method has the advantage of using a small list of definitions to conduct filtering, these definitions may be hard-coded or placed in a flat file and loaded into memory at start-up. The thing to notice is that most pornographers just cannot help themselves, they have to place a objectionable word where the API method is effective, so in effect to hard-code the word xxx in a parental control using the API method blocks about 50% or more of pornographic websites on the Internet. Popular software using this method is Parental Filter prior to version 0.5 and Naomi, as well as many many more. Internet Explorer is highly receptive to the API method and also has the highest market share so in many cases this is method is suitable, acceptable and effective, but the method is highly limited, Mozilla Firefox and Opera are not receptive to this technology but is receptive to a related technology called DDE, Netscape is receptive to neither and deleted its DDE implementation after version 4. A programmer utilizing this method should be satisfied with the methods short comings and not try to deal with each new application in a distinct way. The API method requires no configuration setup for the end user. The next widely utilized technology is the proxy server method. Common proxy servers act as a middle man. An application such as a browser will deliberate with the proxy server and the proxy server will then handle the request and fetch the webpage and return it to the browser. This helps security because the workstation never deals directly with the foreign server but only with the proxy and can also speed up the connection and alleviate congestion by caching content locally. Another way security is improved with proxy servers is to inspect the data being sent and received, if by rules of definitions the data is tagged bad then the proxy server can act like a firewall and deny the communication. In this example the proxy server is a http proxy and receives a http header request for a webpage named http://www.tons-of-porn-but-no-sex-whatup.com the server will parse the host section or the get section of the header and do a search in a database of banned (user defined) word or banned (user defined) urls, if their is positive match the proxy server never relays the request to the remote server but instead either returns nothing and leaves to local client application to deal with the situation or returns an alternative response to the request such as a custom denied page or a redirection header. The proxy method is a very successful way of restricting websites, it has two cons and they are that it requires client applications to be configured to utilize the proxy which may not be feasible and it is notoriously easy to bypass by editing the configuration. Savvy students usually find ways bypass proxy restrictions if they really want to. Some pros to the proxy method is that it is that the technology/logic behind a proxy is pretty much universally compatible. To deviate a little with a similar associated technology I would like to introduce the DNS proxy, many applications make use of a host file, the precursor to DNS, the Internet only understand number they are called IP addresses. When a client requests a connection to a remote server using a domain name the host file is queries to for the domain name to IP address conversion, at this stage the host file can be edited to suggest that a domain name actually has a different IP and simple filtering can be conducted in this way. From the proxy technology and host file technology we can construct a combined technology called a DNS proxy, a locate or remove server handles the request on port 53 parses the request, looks it up in a database of banned domains and returns the appropriate response. Although in certain applications this may OK it is not suitable for filtering due to requesting a remove server by IP address does bypasses DNS.

Contents 1 Internet 2 V-Chip and TV 3 Video Game Systems that have used Parental Controls 4 See also

[edit] Internet

[edit] V-Chip and TV

[edit] Video Game Systems that have used Parental Controls

Listed in chronological order

• Playstation 2
• Xbox
• Playstation Portable
• Xbox 360
• Wii
• Playstation 3

[edit] See also

• Censorware
• Internet censorship
• Videogame Rating Council
• Television rating system
• Motion picture rating system
• V-Chip