Blocking online pornography – is that enough to protect families?

The Government has decided to force ISPs to block pornography by default for UK households. BBC story: Online pornography to be blocked by default, PM to announce. Households will be able to opt-in to be able to access pornography, although some further content may be restricted and search terms blocked.

Online pornography is one of the concerns I had when I started the Kidsafe project last year, although I was just as concerned about the dangers of phishing, inappropriate websites and the risk of children being able to make purchases using one-click stores (eg. App stores).

Some have spoken out that this default-on can create a dangerous sense of complacency, which whilst providing some level of protection will not be enough to make the Internet a safe place in itself.

Whilst this measure can provide some protection against children coming across inappropriate content, as a parent I don’t think this is enough to make the Internet a safe place for children to play and learn without supervision.

Further control and monitoring using Kidsafe

Kidsafe is designed to provide control and monitoring of Internet activity appropriate to the age of the child with the parent firmly in control, I am therefore continuing to develop kidsafe further as a way that children can restrict and monitor their children’s online activity. Whilst it is available in a working format at the moment it is only really suitable for those with significant computer knowledge. In future I plan to make this easier to install and use so that families can use this to provide a higher level of protection for their family.

The software is provided free of charge and it is designed to run on the low cost (approx £30) Raspberry Pi computer.

I hope to have an updated version later this year, which will make it easier for most families to install.

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