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 various websites, such as those containing pornography, or the automatic censoring of swearing.

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[edit] Overview

Several technologies exist in creating Parental Controls for blocking websites. The API method uses the operating system programming interface to gather information about a foreign application 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 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, 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 a positive match the proxy server never relays the request to the remote server but instead either returns nothing and leaves the response to local client application to deal 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 the technology/logic behind a proxy is pretty much universally compatible among operating systems and programming languages.

[edit] Internet

[edit] Commonly used methods to bypass parental controls

Despite the advent of internet blocks and similar devices as well as code written to keep the user on the filtered end from bypassing the software by way of a proxy server. If the filtering software is located locally on the computer ALL internet software can be easily bypassed by booting up the computer in question with a boot CD or similar method of alternate booting for a different operating system provided that boot-cd operates SOLELY in RAM. Thus it doesn't even interact with the hard drive or the carrier of the computers installed OS and thus the internet block will fail to stop this method of bypass.

However, if the computer's BIOS is configured to disallow booting from removable media, and if changes to the BIOS are prohibited without proper authentication, then a proxy server (local or remote) can be effective.

[edit] V-Chip and TV

The V-Chip was a television filtering chip introduced in 2000 that was built into television sets and allowed the TV owner or user to use the remote control to set 'rating levels' to restrict what can be viewed on the set. Provided that the ratings follow the Standard U.S. TV Ratings

Notably, the V-Chip was also parodied in the South Park Movie

[edit] Video game systems that have used parental controls

Listed in chronological order

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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