Although filters provide an alternative way of preventing access to sexual explicit material, we must examine these flaws of filters these flaws. Software filters often block access to valuable and user-friendly Internet information. In order to determine how valid information is blocked through these filters, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) conducted 100 searches through a traditional search engine, and then an additional search through a new search engine only to discover that family-friendly search engines often prevented them from obtaining access to almost 90% of the materials on the Internet containing relevant information.
EPIC's investigation on Net Shepherd Family Search provides an example of how faulty filters often prevent valuable information from reaching the user. The Net Shepherd Search is a Web-based search engine. According to their "Frequently Asked Questions" section, this filter is especially designed to make the Internet a friendlier, more productive place for children and families. In order to make the Internet a more productive atmosphere for families, Net Shepherd filters out Web sites judged by an independent panel of "demographically appropriate Internet users." First, the user submits a search request, for example "Red Cross", which is then directed to the Alta Vista search engine. The Alta Vista results are then filtered through Net Shepherd's rating's database, and then the user views these results. Therefore, a search through Alta Vista, alone is clearly different then searching through a filter like Net Shepherd.
Two claims made by (according to EPIC) must be remembered: First, Net Shepherd states that filtering information is used only when it is "inappropriate and/or objectionable to average user families. Second, it also claims that Shepherd's review of materials is comprehensive; it states that it hits "97% of the English language sites." This information will be useful in discussing the results EPIC's research.
The search conducted by EPIC was broken down into 4 groups:
(1) Elementary, Middle and High schools
(2) Charitable and political organizations
(3) Educational, artistic and cultural organizations; and finally
(4) Miscellaneous concepts and entities
Family Search's use of Alta Vista enabled a straightforward comparison between a filtered and unfiltered search. Their results indicated that a family-friendly search engine typically block access to 95-99 percent of the material available on the Internet that might be of interest to young viewers.
More specifically, results from the search on the first category (Elementary, Middle and High schools) indicated that 99% of the information from Arbor Heights Elementary Web site was blocked by the use of the friendly search engine Net Shepherd.
In reviewing the second category (Charitable and Political Organizations), results also indicated that filtered information often meant blocked valuable information. Many of these organizations were established to provide services and assistance to children and parents. The Internet is a valuable forum of publicity and information to parents. As an example of their search methods, they typed in American Red Cross through a simple Alta Vista Web site search, which provided an abundant amount of information totaling up to 40,000 documents, one being on "Health and Safety Tips: How to Protect Your Family with First Aid Training." But the same search through the Net Shepherd friendly search engine yielded only 77 hits. Overall, in this category, the family search engine blocked 90-99 percent of the material.
We also must discuss the limitations of such a survey and what types of implications this may have on future research. The first limitation mentioned in their research states that the "figures [they] provide regarding how much material the search engine actually blocks represent a percentage of how information blocked that would otherwise be available by means of the Alta Vista Search Engine" (Faulty Filters: How Content Filters Block Access to Kid-Friendly Information on the Internet). In other words, there is a lot more information that is highly accessible which was necessarily searched for by Alta Vista. They also recognized that the ambiguity of using certain search terms, such as "Charitable and Political Organizations" that might otherwise need more information to access specific areas of interest.
EPIC discovered that as information on popular topics became more available on the Web, the search engine was more likely to block an even higher percentage of information. In addition, results indicated that the search engine did not seem to restrict sensitive topics for young viewers any more than it did for general interest areas.
The following chart located from Peacefire.com illustrate many of the similar points discussed in EPIC's research of family search engines. In a similar study, "Study of Average Error Rates for Censorware Programs," conducted by the Peacefire organization, an Internet based organization devoted to promoting "freedom of Internet speech" and young viewers rights to access Internet information, researchers investigated other filters such as Cyber Patrol and Surf Watch. They obtained a list of the first 1,000 active .com domains on the Internet and tested them using five popular blocking programs: Cyber Patrol, SurfWatch, Bess, Parental Controls, and SafeServer. Results indicated as follows:
Average Error Rates for Filters:
| Cyber Patrol | 17/21= 81% error rate |
| Surf Watch | 45/51= 82% error rate |
| Bess | 7/26= 27% error rate |
| AOL Parental Controls | 1/5= 20% error rate |
| Safe Server | 10/29= 34% error rate |
This survey of selected filtering programs found that none of them had an error less than 20%, and two of the programs selected had an error rate of about 80%. Peacefire concluded that any one of the given programs blocks large amounts of valuable information, and that most of these sites blocked have not been reviewed by staff to ensure that these sites meet the company's criteria. For more information on this study, click on Peacefire.com.
