Content Controlling Software or Blatant Censorship?
Posted on March 10th, 2009 in Internet usage monitoring, Miscellaneous | Comments Off
Many parents are now considering the option of installing content-controlling software. With the help of this software you can now decide what kind of control will become available to your kids when they are browsing on the Internet. In fact, your kids are already familiar with it – it is used on their school computers, libraries and many other public computers. Most of this software are available free and often come under other names such as content filtering software, internet filter and the controversial, censor ware.
For most office-goers, their work PC becomes pretty much their PC. However, it would be quite troublesome to live with this delusion as your office computer is pretty much a shared computer. But more importantly, it is your employer’s computer – and whether you want to hear this or not, employers are pretty possessive about their computers. Most employers want to make sure that their employees are being productive and to this end they will monitor everything that you do on your computer, including the mail you send or receive, the calls you make, the sites you browse – absolutely everything that you do on your PC. Is this legal? Well, let’s say it isn’t illegal. Employers can, and they do. So here’s where you need to be careful.
The reason spyware can pose a serious problem is because so many programs and files on the Internet can be thought of as spyware. Take cookies for example. Almost every website you visit will store cookies containing information about you on your hard drive and will retrieve this cookie each time you visit that website. However, cookies are important for browsing and using certain sites. It would be impossible to directly log in to your email account if Gmail or Yahoo did not store a cookie on your computer. A similar opinion is attached to key logging software that many parents may install to track the internet activities of their children, thereby ensuring that they are not indulging in harmful activities on the Internet. Although it may seem intrusive, this does not amount to spying using spyware. Cookies and key logging software when used on one’s own machine are absolutely justified. However, when a website tries to place cookies onto your machine without your informed consent or when someone places a key logging software on YOUR computer without your confirmation, then that amounts to spying.
