a 4 i) rm Nae 7 oy DAS 7 oi 4) a)? y * rs REN EB RES MB VAL MBfe Sey 13 The Key To Internet Safety (NAPSA)—It’s important for par- ents to know where the information superhighway takestheir children. One reason is that experts say more and more children are unwittingly reaching offensive or inappropriate Websites. According to the Safe America Foundation, over half of schoolaged children have encountered offensive Web sites, and almostall of them did so unintentionally. To help control what gets Internetfiltering systems can help protect children from inappropriate Websites. filter.” The programs let people Internet policies and filtering guidelines. It also allows the through the Net, a numberof families use what’s called a “content determine what specific sites and what types of sites are and are not appropriate for their children. “Content filtering has become a necessity for families wanting to safeguard their children online,” says David Orshan, who spear- headed the development of MyWebWatcher. “It is also an essential component of every school and business’s efforts to manage the risk of Internet abuse,” he says. Mostfiltering products and services are uickly outdated by the daily proliferation of new Web sites. Orshan’s service is currently the only Web-based Internetfiltering service that combines real- time evaluation with a largelist of Websites that have already been rated. It evaluates sites before users see them, and lets the administrator (usually the parent or guardian, grade supervisor or human resource director) customize thefiltering process. MyWebWatcher’s customiza- tion feature allows every family and school to set up their own administrator to override the blocking of individual Web sites when that block should not happen. And the service tracks Internet usage, with reports available online, 24-hours a day. The statistics were disturbing enough to cause Congress to pass the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) last year, reuiring schools and libraries who receive federal funding for their Internet connections to have Internet poli- cies as well as filtering technology in place. MyWebWatcher is CIPAcompliant and, to help schools with their never-ending fundraising efforts, the service pays a portion of every monthly paid subscription back to the school when its students’ families sign up at home. Administrators can use family member, student, grade, faculty, employee or work group as a user- criteria. For more information, visit www.mywebwatcher.net.
