PROS

CONS

1) Protects minors from pornography or obscene websites that are unsuitable for their age.

1) Accidentally blocks an entire websites with inappropriate words or phrases such as “chicken breast.”

2) Blocks “Hate Speech” or pictures/text advocating prejudice or discrimination against race, color, nationality, religion, gender or sexual orientation.

2) Prevents people from viewing what they want to see. This takes away mature audiences rights.

3) Prevents kids from giving out personal information like their name, date of birth address, etc. to strangers.

3) Filters limit online researching. Websites that include important topics such as AIDS are blocked.

4) Filters help teachers because they ensure that the use of computers in school is for educational purposes only.

4) Different filtering programs block different websites for various reasons based on that program’s criteria. Who’s to say what’s being filtered is always the right thing to block?

5) Children are blocked from entering sex chat rooms, where their identity can be given out, and where they can get in trouble with strangers.

5) Censor companies are not reviewing pages before blocking specific sites such as Breast Cancer Legislation or the Vatican. Therefore, appropriate sites are being blocked for no known reason.

After reading about the various filtering programs, the one that I liked the most was Cyber Patrol. It offers parental control software that helps parents choose when and how their kids use the Internet. This is excellent because even if kids sneak on-line, we are protecting them from inappropriate sites.