EU finds parental control software less effective with web 2.0 content

Parental control software is not very good at blocking social networking sites or instant messaging, according to a study from the European Union.

Interim results from research looking at the effectiveness of parental control software and services shows that while this protection generally works well at filtering certain content, there are gaps.

In a statement released by the EU from the first benchmarking test, it said: "A healthy 84 per cent of the software programs tested enable parents to block access to certain websites. They are less efficient at filtering so-called web 2.0 content such as social networking sites or blogs.

"In addition, only a few products on the market are able to filter web content accessed via mobile phones or game consoles, at a time when one child out of four in Europe goes online in this way."

This study forms part of a wider EU initiative, the Safer Internet Programme (Sip) which also introduced Safer Internet centres around the EU.

There are a number of ongoing projects looking at ways to make it safer for children to go online; for example by raising awareness and fighting illegal and harmful content.

The researchers in this study analysed 26 parental control tools for PCs, three for games consoles and two for mobile phones.

The settings for two age groups, 10-year-olds and younger and 11+-year-olds, were chosen for the project, which ran between September and October 2010. The languages used were English, French, German, Italian, Polish and Spanish.

Software was tested to see how compatible it was with different operating systems, how easy it was to set up, how effective it was at filtering and if it was ‘child-proof'; ie a youngster could not easily circumnavigate the controls.

According to the EU, existing software is good at filtering adult online content, although it is not perfect. There is the study showed about a 20 per cent chance that sites with unsuitable material for children can be accessed; especially those encouraging youngsters to self-harm (sites promoting anorexia, suicide or self-mutilation) could pass through their filters.

Only a few programs were able to filter web 2.0 content (such as social networking sites, forums, and blogs), block instant messaging or chat protocols, or filter contact lists.

With more than a quarter of children using their mobile phones or games consoles to access the internet, the study concluded that parental controls for these devices are limited.

Another limiting factor is language. English is the most common language for the parental control tools, and other languages are not well catered for.