The Discordant Opposition Journal Issue 10 - File 6
Defeating parental control software
By: Kleptic - kleptic@grex.org
The goal of parental control programs is to allow parents to monitor their children's Internet use and keep them from accessing pornography or other information deemed, "unsuitable for children." To accomplish this, most parental control programs use a combination of banned Web lists and URL scanning.
The banned web lists simply contain web sites that the makers of the parental control program consider unacceptable for children to view, such as the Condom Country site (http://www.condom.com), the Playboy site (http://www.playboy.com), or the Hustler site (http://www.hustler.com). Because new websites appear everyday, publishers of these programs must constantly update their lists of banned websites to maintain their programs' effectiveness (and users of parental control software must constantly download these updated lists to keep their programs updated).
The second form of defense, URL or content scanning, works by examining the words in a URL address of the text on the webpage. SO if you type in a URL that contains an offensive word such as "love," "sex," or "nude," or the page you access contains certain words, the parental control program assumes the URL points to a pornographic Website and refuses to grant you access.
Ironically, many parental control programs also block access to websites that list books banned by various schools, such as the On-line books page website at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/People/spok/banned-books.html (the site might not be up anymore). This can be useful in case parents don't want their children to read anything that might be offensive, such as classic novels, encyclopaedias, or dictionaries that define obscene terms.
But URL scanning is not without its flaws. It can often be beaten by typing in the numeric website address rather than the more descriptive URL. Even worse, URL scanning can often block innocent websites that contain suspicious words such as "hot," (such as a Website adervtising hot chili), "girls," (such as a website loaded with info on girl scout cookies), or even "X-" (such as a fan site for X-Files).
To lean how to defeat parental control programs such as NEtNanny, CyberSitter, and Cyber Patrol, visit the Glen L. Roberts "Nurse Your Net Nanny" website at http://www.glr.com/nurse.html. Here you can find instructions or actual programs for disabling parental controls software.
Although parental control programs work as advertised, they present a curious paradox. Because kids often understand computers better then their parents, it's easy to imagine that some parents won't be able to install a parental control program correctly in the first place. And most parents will think that parental control programs alone can keep their children safe from forbidden websites on the Internet.
Well thats all for now..
- kleptic
kleptic@grex.org
