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ISP Webilant Content Filter Web content filtering server appliance and server clusters Server-side content filter provides a balance of Freedom and Safety on the Internet. Webilant \Web'i*lant\, n. [Compound word: World-Wide-Web + vigilant fr L. vigilare to watch, Attentive to discover and avoid danger, or to provide for safety.] A server-based web content filtering/blocking device manufactured by ISP Ltd. of Victoria, British Columbia that blocks web sites and content which transgresses the morals of the Holy Bible. For ISPs who acknowledge the desperate need in society to have a child-safe, family-oriented, and/or God-honouring service — whether Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, we all share a common goal in this regard. 
The Webilant eliminates offensive web sites at the server in order to provide "sanitised" Internet for families and businesses. With the Webilant parents can feel less anxious about their children doing research on the Internet. Likewise, corporate H.R. departments can greatly reduce the task of policing employee Internet use, and employees can be relieved of the stress of using the Internet since these days an innocent search with the 'wrong' search terms can yield unexpected and unwanted results. Governments see the need More and more world governments, universities, and private groups are endorsing, implementing, or calling for the implementation of content filtering such as this, especially for children but also for the mental health of all of society. The governments of Yemen, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, China, Thailand, Singapore, and the UAE are a few of the ones which have mandated content filtering at the national level. In the USA, libraries and schools are required to filter Internet content under the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA). The outcry from the public for governments to do something about Internet pornography is growing in intensity around the globe. In the April 2006 on-line edition of the Scotsman are the following headlines:
Business acknowledges the need As reported in a Sept. 2002 Reuters news article, abuse of e-mail and the Internet, including the downloading of pornography, has overtaken theft of office supplies and lying to the boss as the top disciplinary action reported in the workplace. More disciplinary cases have been brought against employees for violating company e-mail and Internet policies than for acts of dishonesty, violence or health and safety breaches, according to a survey by KLegal, a law firm associated with global accounting group KPMG, and Personnel Magazine. The Computer Security Institute stated in their Computer Crime and Security Survey 2002 that among 503 companies surveyed, 78 percent detected employee abuse of Internet access privileges (for example, downloading pornography or pirated software, or inappropriate use of e-mail systems). Christians suffer amidst the great need Christians everywhere are bombarded with subtle persecution by being forced to accept principles which are contrary to God's commands such as homosexuality, adultery, lying, stealing, prostitution, disrespect of parents, disrespect of God, and so forth. The ISP Family Fitler serves to ease the burden of our Christian brothers and sisters in their use of the Internet. If our content filter were based on the opinion of a group of people, such as our company, then we would naturally end up making politically-motivated decisions based on our personal biases. For example, in a product review one content filtering company was found to have placed their competition in their content filter. Our content filtering rules are based on the ethics laid out in the Holy Bible, a commonly available guide that remains constant, with the aim being to restrict viewing of material that would psychologically and/or spiritually damage a child or adult. Thus, viewing pornography is blocked because it can psychologically harm a child and it can also damage an adult couple's relationship, whereas viewing information on the Islamic religion is not blocked because even though it is not Christian it is educational and not psychologically damaging to read about it. Server-side versus Client-side blocking By blocking sites at the server, rather than on the individual's computer, your subscribers don't need to make any changes to their computers nor worry about any of the problems or inadequacies associated with client-side blocking. Usually at least once per day the content filter rules are updated (except for Sundays and holidays). The update happens without interruption to subscribers' Internet service. When the core filtering engine software is updated once or twice per year, this is done in the middle of the night with no more than a few minutes' interruption to subscribers' Internet service. Thus, subscribers always have the use of the latest and most up-to-date filtering software and rules without any need to update their own computers — it just works. Compare this approach of the ISP Webilant to content filters which operate on the user's computer: Windows-based filter software is relatively easy to disable (accidentally or intentionally), may not be updated regularly, some require annual license fees, and they must be installed on every computer that uses the Internet rather than a central machine. The ISP Webilant runs at the ISP so it cannot be disabled, is updated every day, and automatically blocks offensive sites before the even have the chance to reach the subscriber's computer. The Intelligence of the ISP Webilants The ISP content filter, now in its sixth year of refinement (since 2000), is a multi-stage filter operating at the level of firewall, DNS, and routing which is scalable from a single server to a cluster of servers to handle hundreds or thousands of dial-up and broadband customers. The ISP Webilant contains hundreds of thousands of web server addresses, DNS server addresses, domain names, and pattern matching rules which are applied to all web content as it is requested. Our filter is sufficiently advanced that it will block the majority of newly published offensive sites before anyone is even aware they exist. Another advanced feature of our content filter is the ability to display partial content. Some sites contain a mix of acceptable and unacceptable material. Such sites will often begin loading, allowing the visitor to read the text, and only the offensive advertisements or other graphics will be trapped and blocked. The ISP Webilant allows medical research and educational sites through while stopping even deceptively marketed evil sites in their tracks. Have you yet received a software or insurance-quote e-mail that leads to a pornographic web site? We have, and no doubt thousands of young adults and teenagers who do not have the benefit of content filtering have seen them as well. We observe and learn from these unscruplous marketers in an on-going effort to make our content filter more effective. Our content filter is not easily circumvented by proxying techniques that fool other filters, and it cannot be disabled on the subscriber's computer. The ISP Webilant is a powerful guardian at the gate of the Internet upon whom you and your subscribers may relay — whether businesses seeking improved productivity or families seeking protection for children. Safer than the competition Almost all content filtering appliances on the market are designed for corporate environments, not for ISP use. They provide overly complex rules which an ISP does not need, reports that are meaningless to an ISP, and rules which are designed only with business productivity in mind, not families. The ISP content filters consider families and businesses, and are designed specifically for use by ISPs. An ISP's subscribers will not often be inconvenienced by false blocks of good web sites, although our family product does lean toward safety rather productivity, but on the occasion when a site is blocked a friendly message appears which informs the user of the reason the content was blocked and allows them to report the block, either anonymously or requesting a return e-mail from the Webilant administrator at ISP Ltd. Your subscribers get the benefit of content filtering and personal service with absolutely no overhead to you — ISP Ltd. takes care of it all. Do people want content filtering? Indeed they do. Here are some bits of information from the Pew Internet & American Life Project as well as some other Internet research articles to inform you further on the matter:
 Content filtering is an immediate and urgent need in society. The USA enacted the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) in December 2000, requiring schools and libraries to install content filtering to protect children. Twenty years from now, by the time the evidence is a clear and present danger, will be too late. Society is depending on ISPs to act now on behalf of our children. A PDF brochure on the ISP Webilant can be found here (please pardon the somewhat negative tone, I need to update this brochure; making a content filter is like being an Internet cop, it's a tough job that often "gets me down"). ISP Ltd. will provide the Webilant software for free to any non-profit organisation, including churches, libraries, and schools, upon request. The organisation will need a dedicated Linux server, whether purcahsed from ISP Ltd. or elsewhere, and an administrator who knows how to install software on it in order to take advantage of this offer. Also, daily updates are needed to keep any filter effective, just like with anti-virus software, and we will provide updates to qualifying non-profit organisations at a discounted rate, on a sliding scale to fit their budget. |
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© 1999-2008 Angelo Babudro ·
Updated Wed, 02 May 2007 03:36:25 -0400 · Solo Deo gloria. |
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