Protecting kids on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks

Like Norton and McAfee, we have been labeling domains and sub-domains to protect kids from unsuitable and harmful content. Our competitors focus on dozens of categories - such as religion, gambling, violence etc.. At MetaCert, we focus on doing one thing very well. We focus all our attention on labeling sites that contain ’sexually explicit content’ and as a result, we provide much better solutions for this type of content blocking - for both enterprise and consumers. I don’t mind being bullish with my assertion as they’re both multi-billion dollar companies and MetaCert is a new startup based in San Francisco.

We’re not happy with being the best however. We want to be as good as we can be. So with this in mind, we have pushed our technology to the next level by becoming the very first company worldwide, to label folders, URLs and search strings. This means that we can now protect kids from pornography across websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social networks and sites that contain user generated content, without having to block the entire site.

While we have scaled our crawling and classification platform to label more domains and sub-domains than any other company in the world, we are now hard at work looking for the scalable solution for labeling URLs.

Unlike our domains, the number of individual URLs/profiles etc. doesn’t go into billions, yet. However, we are labeling more Facebook and Twitter profiles every day. Our goal is to work with these companies to help them create better tools for their customers to classify their own content. Even this isn’t perfect, but it’s as good as technology permits.

It’s possible to submit websites that you feel should be labeled from our site here. It’s not yet possible to submit URLs, so for now, you can propose profile pages and applications in the comments of this blog.

I read a tweet from Mary Kay Hoal earlier today that brought my attention to a blog post, warning parents about specific Facebook pages that they should be aware of. As soon as I read the post I labeled every one of the sex-related pages. These are now all blocked when using our new Chrome extension and will soon be blocked when using our iPad browser Olly and our Firefox extension (all free).

Our Chrome extension is our first consumer application to be updated with the ability to filter/block individual URLs etc. It’s free, it’s fast and it works. It now blocks more than 655 million pages of pornography plus all the individual Facebook and Twitter profile pages. Our system is cloud-based. This means that our customers don’t need to update our software to make use of the thousands of new domains/URLs being added hourly.

Please note that browser extensions generally, are most useful for kids who don’t know their way around browser software as they can sometimes disable family safety controls. Our extension is also useful for adults who either want to block pornography at all times, or if they don’t want embarrassing sites to pop up on their screen at work when opening up emails from colleagues sending ‘funny’ jokes.

No technology is a substitute for parental guidance. We should use software to help us protect kids from harmful content, but more importantly, we should educate them about how to use the Web sensibly.

Protect your kids with these free products and services

Install MetaSurf for Chrome

Install MetaSurf for Firefox

Install Olly Browser for you iPad

Use our DNS Service

Today, c|net and the Business Insider covered a story about Google changing it’s SafeSearch. It’s now a simple ON/OFF switch for “Filtering explicit results”. This demonstrates that the market conditions are changing in favour of making it easier to control access to explicit material specifically, over and above other types of content. It also demonstrates that MetaCert is on the right track in helping companies to improve “how” they improve their existing family safety controls, or implement new ones, specifically for controlling access to explicit content.

Google SafeSearch is great for young kids but…

Although Google’s methodology is good for protecting young children from explicit content, it could be further improved by adopting MetaCert’s data feed. With Google SafeSearch enabeled, a search for “porn” blocks everything. That is, zero search results are returned. Using any one of MetaCert’s applications that demonstrate the use of our data, returns search results, excluding only the sites that actually contain pornography. Crude family safety blocking is ok for young kids, but improvements are needed for wiser teenagers and adults who would like to exclude sites that contain explicit content and not sites that talk about it.

Ironically, as you can see from the second screen shot, even c|net and the Business Insider are filtered out. You could argue that you shouldn’t search for “porn”. But it does demonstrates my point in over blocking on a vast scale that isn’t so obvious to the customer.

Below is a screen shot taken when using our iPad browser, Olly. As you can see, the same search has very different results. Companies that use MetaCert’s DNS or API as described by the Guardian this week, would also see much more accurate search results for their customers - without over blocking.

Thanks to Google, other companies that provide Internet access might see how helping customers control access to pornography should be the number one priority. Controlling access should be an easy-to-use on/off switch like we have on Olly and our browser extensions. More advanced settings can be provided for other categories such as violence, nudity, gambling etc.

Almost every Internet safety solution on the market, continue to use outdated keyword blocking. It is technically impossible to differentiate between sites that contain adult content with sites that either talk about it, or help you protect your kids from it. The AVG Family Safe browser doesn’t even do that much well - it’s pretty obvious that “sex health” has nothing to do with pornography. That said, it’s not easy to build a browser, so perhaps they should stick to what they’re fantastic at; anti virus software solutions.

The three problems as demonstrated by the AVG Family Safety browser:

1. Search results that contain sexual health related websites should not be categorized as “pornography”.
2. Sexual health related websites should not be blocked as a results of being miscategorized.
3. The browser vendor/filtering company doesn’t allow the user to dispute the classification

There is an answer. And here it is. It’s called Olly - an iPad browser that provides protection for kids online and privacy for parents. It’s free, easy to use and blocks more pornography than any other software in the world - over 31 billion URLs.

Today I read a post on Gigaom entitled “Can startups afford to be socially responsible?”. You should read the post to get all the facts but the short of it is this; startups can have B Corp. status. To become B Corp certified, companies must achieve 80 out of 200 possible points on a social and environmental assessment. And then there’s the cost of certification.

MetaCert is a socially responsible company due to the fact that we help to protect children from harmful content and some of our technology and resource is dedicated to helping The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) combat online child exploitation. However, I don’t believe we will ever dedicate any time, resource or money to apply for a certificate that says we do the above. We just do it.

We must all be more responsible in business and in society generally.

You wouldn’t be blamed for thinking that this is ok. And for some, it is ok if you don’t care about where the money comes from. Investment is investment, especially if it’s via a trusted proxy. But I personally don’t like it. It’s probably only legal because the final documents highlight who’s really behind the money. It would otherwise be illegal in many countries.

I can’t speak for everyone, but as the founder of a company that is soon to announce investment from 8 angels and counting (counting because we close the round next week and are in discussion with some more awesome investors), and as the co-founder of a non-profit microfinance charity in India, it is absolutely vital that all parties know where the money is coming from. Knowing where money is coming from is one of the most important aspect of an investment - whether you are an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley lucky enough to secure funding for your new tech startup, or if you are a poor entrepreneur living in a slum in India and lucky enough to secure a micro loan to help create new scarves.

Don’t get me wrong. I would love to be lucky enough to have Sequoia invest in MetaCert. But only when our team believes it’s the right time. Bringing VC’s into the fold is determined by chemistry and timing.

I very much look forward to reading their detailed report on this subject.

Check out the O2 “status checker” and see if any of your favourite non-adult sites are being blocked.

It called on the Government to once again consider a compulsory opt-in scheme for accessing adult content online. The inquiry also recommended that all public Wifi networks should have a ‘default adult-content bar’.

According to the Daily Mail, Google reacted by saying “parents are to blame if children view porn and it attacks call for legal curbs”.

Google executive Naomi Gummer says “it is a ‘myth’ that laws can protect children from internet pornography”. I would have to agree with this in part. Laws don’t protect children. Parents do. However, laws and technology can help parents to protect their children.

I believe mandating all ISPs and mobile device vendors to provide new and improved family safety controls that actually work, is a great idea. When I represented MetaCert during the consultation of the Parliamentary inquiry, I suggested that parents should be able to easily opt-out of pornography. Family safety controls today are all based on old methods and technologies. Here’s one example of how Google SafeSearch isn’t the answer.

Here’s more evidence of Google’s level of insight to family safety. According to Gummer

the extent of sexual content online had been exaggerated and that only a tiny minority of children are ‘upset’ by what they see.

Really? It doesn’t take a genius or any number of industry reports to see that children are too easily exposed to porn when using Google or YouTube.

Try yourself. Google “play girl” in the hope that you will find girls toys. Notice how the kid-safe search results are mixed with porn sites?

According to Gummer

Twenty-five per cent of kids have seen sexual images, but only 14 per cent saw them online,’ she said. ‘Of that, 4 per cent say they were upset by the images, 2 per cent of those images are hard-core and violent, and the rest is nudity in the same way as perhaps seen in the offline world.

So, of the 14% of kids who have seen sexual images, only 4% were upset? Er, does that mean it’s ok to expose kids to porn if they like it? Isn’t this the reason why kids are actually becoming addicted to porn as I covered in my last post?

Google is being very irresponsible and it should try to improve its own family safety controls. Perhaps they’re afraid that YouTube will eventually be completely blocked given that it can be a dangerous playground for kids to hang out in.

My offer to the Daily Mail

The Daily Mail has a campaign to back the Government’s goal to help parents protect kids from pornography. I would like to invite them (the Daily Mail) to work with MetaCert to help companies that provide Internet access, improve their family safety controls. We can do this by offering our massive index of 609 million pages of pornography for free. That’s the largest data set of its kind worldwide - used strictly for Internet family safety.

Disclaimer

I must assert that MetaCert and me personally as its CEO, do not have an opinion on what is and what is not appropriate for people on the Web. We simply provide the technology that helps parents to better protect their kids.

A UK cross-party Parliamentary inquiry into child protection online has renewed calls for the blocking of adult content on the internet.

The Independent Parliamentary Inquiry into Online Child Protection found that children were easily accessing pornography online and said that exposure to it was having a ‘negative impact’ on attitudes towards sex, relationships and body image.

It called on the Government to once again consider a compulsory opt-in scheme for accessing adult content online. The inquiry also recommended that all public Wifi networks should have a ‘default adult-content bar’.

The UK’s four biggest ISPs, BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin have all signed up to a code of conduct, which requires new customers to choose if they want adult content filtering on their internet account. TalkTalk was in the media recently for failing to block one of the most widely visited porn sites in the world. This was obviously a problem. But, for me the real problem was the fact that it took TalkTalk weeks to block the site.

Conservative MP and chairwoman of the inquiry Claire Perry said:

While parents should be responsible for their children’s online safety, in practice people find it difficult to put content filters on the plethora of internet-enabled devices in their homes, plus families lack the right information and education on internet safety.

It’s time that Britain’s internet service providers, who make more than £3 billion a year from selling internet access services, took on more of the responsibility to keep children safe, and the Government needs to send a strong message that this is what we all expect.

During the inquiry, MPs heard evidence from ISPs, pornographers and child-protection groups. The final report (direct download of the PDF) documents MetaCert’s contribution. MetaCert provided written evidence alongside organizations such as the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), Facebook, Ofcom and the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. MetaCert was also involved in private briefing meetings alongside BT, Apple, Sky, Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) and Symantec.

Representing MetaCert, my advice was to encourage the implementation of new and improved family safety controls as planned, but to allow parents to opt-out of pornography rather than force ISPs to block it by default, forcing parents to request access. For me, automatic blocking is just another form of censorship. MetaCert doesn’t have an opinion on what is and what isn’t appropriate for adults. We believe everyone should have the freedom to make up their own mind. What we do believe in however, is “encouraging” industry to make it easier for parents to block pornography to help protect their families from potentially harmful content.

Ms Sanders, Agony Aunt for The Sun newspaper, said that people were now accessing pornography at younger ages:

I am hearing from a 13-year-old girl being pressured into trying a threesome; the mind boggles, really. There is certain behaviour I only used to have bald 40-year-olds asking me about it, now under-16s are thinking about it.

Jerry Barnett, managing director of adult-pornography website Strictly Broadband, said that the adult-entertainment industry would ‘love to see the free material vanish’ and sell pornography ‘at higher prices’, thus making it less accessible to children. I’m unsure about this one - I think it’ll just cut down on piracy.

Kids becoming addicted to porn

I’ve been working in this space for more than 7 years and was still amazed by some statistics that I picked up from the The Telegraph, Calcutta, India (thanks to one of our angel investors who shall remain nameless until you read about it on PandoDaily). According to the Telegraph

Counsellors say that schoolchildren as young as nine or 10 are regularly viewing pornography on the Internet.

Over the mobile phone or in corners of the classroom, they swap stories about the onscreen antics of their porn stars. “They also develop preferences within pornography — young man-older woman, threesomes, bondage or same sex couplings,” says Mumbai counsellor Swati Deepak.

Watching or reading pornography, experts say, is part of growing up. But what worries educationists and parents is that many children are going beyond that; they are getting addicted to porn — which may have serious repercussions.

Take Sushmita’s case. The teenager soon decided to replace what she saw on the screen with real life. She went to bed with a college-going male friend and copied the porn stars she’d been viewing. When she missed her next period, she shared her predicament with the school counsellor. Her mother was called to the school, a hasty abortion followed and there was heartbreak in the household.

Or take the case of Vikas, a 14-year-old who has been hooked on porn sites for two years. He also logs on to a chat site, where he poses as an older man and engages in sex talk with other men. But Vikas felt threatened some weeks ago when one of the men he chats with began stalking him.

“I get an average of a case a fortnight of adolescents addicted to porn,” says Dr Raj Brahmabhatt, sexologist and marriage counsellor, Mumbai. “Many of them are seventh and eighth standard boys, from some of Mumbai’s top schools.”

With the proliferation of tablets such as iPads and mobile phones such as the iPhone, Online Family Safety is a growing concern. Industry must act because most parents aren’t even aware of the dangerous. Take the iPad and iPhone for example, they have absolutely no parental controls. It’s time industry made serious improvements to family safety controls.

The problem with existing solutions:

1. Existing family safety controls mainly use keyword checking. You only have to change Google SafeSearch setting to strict to see that it blocks every result for ‘porn’ - including family safety sites that provide advice on the subject.
2. A quick look at the AVG Family Safety browser for the iPad ($19.99 annual subscription) demonstrates that old methods and technologies are still in play also – a search for “hardcore” blocks all search results even though, not one pornographic websites appears in the first page of Google’s search results.
3. Microsoft IE Content Advisor uses a system that was created during the mid 90’s called PICS. It is estimated that there are fewer than 15,000 websites that have self-labeled with PICS. It is technically no longer possible to label a site with PICS as the organization responsible for it, has changed direction http://icra.org and it was formally replaced as a W3C Recommendation with a new method called POWDER (declaration: which I helped to instigate some years ago)
4. Most ISPs don’t have family safety controls at all.
5. Family safety on mobile is “all or nothing” and again, is based on keyword checking. There is no way to block pornography only, on any mobile carrier.

You can download the report here (direct download)

If you want to ensure that embarassing sites don’t appear on your screen when a colleague sends you an email with a suspicious link, or if you want to protect young kids from pornography, download one of these two browser extensions for Firefox and Chrome. They are free, easy to use and block more pornography than any other software application on the market. They each block more than 605 million pages of porn.

Unlike Google SafeSearch and other applications, MetaSurf doesn’t block sites that it shouldn’t by using outdated methods such as keyword checking. It only blocks pages that have been indexed by MetaCert - with more pages being indexed every day. Check out the live counter at http://metasurf.net

Check out the extension and leave a great rating score if you like it.

Please be aware that it is impossible to stop users from disabling Chrome extensions. So we highly recommend using this extension if you want to block pornography for yourself, or for young children who are not likely to change the settings on your browser when your back is turned.

Download the Chrome extension now!

When you use Google SafeSearch for family safety you’re actually blocking more sites than you would hope, just like the one below.

Do you think a site displaying food should be blocked by Google SafeSearch? Yes if you’re a vegetarian I guess, but not if you’re hoping to block pornography to help protect your family from unsuitable content without restricting access to the rest of the Web.

As I was testing MetaSurf, our family safe Firefox extension, I found a great example to demonstrate why keyword checking adopted by family safety controls like Google SafeSearch, are based on outdated methods that haven’t been improved since the 90’s.

If you set Google SafeSearch preferences to ’strict’, it blocks websites that do not contain pornography, just like almost every other family safety control on the market. FoodPornDaily is blocked, yet it’s a website displaying pictures of food. They’re a little naive for using the term porn in the domain and site name, but still, it’s an example to demonstrate how keyword matching does not work. And it doesn’t stop there, SafeSearch also blocks Wikipedia and every other website on the web that ‘talks’ about porn. It even blocks websites that educate people about the dangers behind accessing pornography. And if I used the term porn in this post title, it would block this too. These family safety methods are old and need to be revised. What we need is a simple ‘opt-in / opt-out’ feature that allows parents to block sites that contain pornography, without blocking those that talk about it.

Interestingly, Microsoft Internet Explore has been using PICS since the mid 90’s - the old W3C standard that was replaced by our method of labeling content in 2009. It’s even technically impossible to label a site with PICS today and yet, IE still uses it as part of Content Advisor. And it is estimated that there are fewer than 15,000 websites with PICS.

The AVG family safe browser application for the iPad automatically blocks the search terms ‘hardcore’, even though there isn’t one search result on the first page Google that links to a site containing pornography - blocking perfectly safe radio stations etc. Keyword checking simple does not work.

To help improve family safety online, I started a new venture called MetaCert, where we have created the largest data set of over 588 million pages that contain sexually explicit content. And our system is indexing millions more every week. If Apple, Google, Mozilla, Opera and Microsoft would like to compliment their existing family safety controls with MetaCert’s dataset, we will happily give them the entire data for free, along with regular updates as we index more pages every day. We’re in advanced talks with at least one of these corporations so we must be doing something right.

Did I mention that we’re offering this data to the search engines and browsers for free?