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How does the Internet content filter work?

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There are three major options that most Internet content filters have. The first is the assigning of levels, categories, or individual sites with the filter. Some that assign levels of Internet content have a slide bar. You can slide the bar to the most extreme, which blocks sites that have any mention of word that alludes to drug use…or you can slide the bar to a setting which will allow many sites to still be viewed. There are also certain categories that you can block out. At work you may trust your workers enough to allow them to choose what websites that they browse, but still do not want them in chat rooms all day. So you click off the drug use and violence, but click on the chat rooms. Internet content filters are not perfect, so there may be some sites that slip through the cracks. That is where the individual site blocker comes into practice. If one of your employees or children come to you and say that they were able to view a certain site and didn’t wish to, you can go into your Internet content filter and block that specific site.

The second option or feature that is included in most Internet content filters is the ability to set passwords overall or passwords for certain user accounts. If at your house you don’t want your children to have access to certain game accounts because of the possibility of predators out there, but you like to play pool online, then you can set up a password. That password can be set up so that whenever anyone wants to access certain sites that they have to enter it…or you can assign usernames and passwords to accounts and let each individual account have access to certain content levels.

The third feature that may come with Internet content filters is a report that comes at a specified time to an email account. This report is for upkeep of your filter and for accountability to the people that are using your computers. If for example someone finds a way to access a certain web-based email account and you don’t want him or her to be able to anymore, you will see it on the report. You can simply go in and block that individual website. Without the weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly report of sites that are possibly dangerous you would never have been able to know that someone has found a loophole.

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