Parental controls

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Please improve this article if you can. (November 2006)

This article is about computer options. For the TV series, see Parental Control.

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 and/or time-limit these activities. 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.

1 Overview
2 Commonly-used methods to bypass parental controls
3 V-Chip and TV
4 Video game systems that have used parental controls
5 Operating systems with parental controls
6 See also
7 External links

[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 to 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; in some cases, a different action like deleting the offending words may 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 startup.

The next widely utilized technology is the proxy server method. An application such as a browser will communicate with the proxy server and the proxy server will then handle the request and fetch the Web page and return it to the browser. This helps security because the workstation never deals directly with the foreign server but only with the proxy, which 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 an http proxy and receives an http header request for a Web page; 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) words or banned (user-defined) URLs. If there 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 the local client application to deal with, or returns an alternative response to the request, such as a custom "denied" page or a redirection header.

The proxy method's major disadvantages 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 to bypass proxy restrictions if they really want to. Some advantages of the proxy method are that the technology/logic behind a proxy is pretty much universally compatible among operating systems and programming languages.

[edit] Commonly-used methods to bypass parental controls

Several methods exist, 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 Live 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 computer's installed OS and so the Internet block will fail to stop this method of bypass.

There are also several new ways to bypass the controls on the "next-gen" video game consoles, such as the PlayStation 3 and the XBOX 360. This involves using the Folding@Home application (presently only on the PS3 and PC) with a certain workaround contained right inside of it.

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. The V-Chip depended on the ratings following the Standard U.S. TV Ratings.

Notably, the V-Chip was also parodied in the South Park Movie, as well as the television series Futurama.