Like the Wild West, the internet is a lawless frontier fraught with danger, especially for children. It's very easy for people to post illegal content and very difficult for individual countries to block access to it.

The problem extends to legal adult content too, as there's no way for a website to check a surfer's identity in the same way as, say, a video store.

This will cause headaches to any parent that wants their child to gain access to all of the good stuff that the internet has to offer but block access to all the bad.

Banning access entirely or endeavouring to watch a child surf are problematic ways of solving the issue and not the right answer.

In this feature, Computeractive will look at the various ways you can surf in safety, followed by six product reviews of software designed to protect you and your family online.

The problem
The first step towards surfing safely is to understand the exact problems faced online.

The Internet Watch Foundation, a UK-based organisation that combats online child abuse, defines three online threat categories: contact, content and commerce.

Contact is the highest threat and is defined as when your child meets up with an online contact. This is made more dangerous because people online can hide their real identity and age.

Content is unsuitable adult or illegal content that can harm or offend young web users.

Commerce refers to people being exploited or scammed out of money by dubious marketing practices. The Internet Watch Foundation has a full guide to safe surfing on its website which explains these categories in more detail.

Education
At first, fighting these online threats may seem to be a case of buying the right software, but this is the last step that you should take.

You should start with education for your children and make sure that they understand what is acceptable online behaviour and how to avoid dangerous situations.

We already tell children not to talk to strangers and to be careful crossing the road so, naturally, similar rules and explanations need to apply to the internet.

The SafeKids and SafeTeens websites are packed with information for you and your children to help increase education on the subject.

Internet Explorer security
Once you understand the problems there's no harm in getting software to help protect your children.

After all, harmful material can be accidentally chanced upon and Internet Explorer has built-in protection through its Content Advisor system.

This system reads special 'tags' that have been put on web pages to correctly identify content. It's a voluntary system that requires website managers to correctly identify their websites and use the tags.

While this is far from infallible and only covers websites, not email or chat programs, the protection is there so you might as well use it. See below to learn how to do this.

In safe hands
If you'd prefer a more rugged approach which doesn't rely on website owners being honest, you could always opt for a safe internet service provider (ISP).

There are plenty of family-friendly services out there that will do the filtering for you. The advantage is that you don't need to worry about software updates as these are handled for you.

V Two One and UK Online are just two ISPs that offer this functionality. The only downside is that, if you already have an ISP, you will have to change to take advantage of the extra protection.

Email
Although email is a great way of communicating, it leads to several problems. First, spammers send offensive material. Second, a child can be bullied by email.

Blocking access to email is difficult using just Outlook or Outlook Express and a good alternative is KidsCom safe email. For £10 a year you get a safe, web-based email account for your child.

They can only receive emails from email addresses that you have authorised; everything else gets sent to your own email address to vet before your child sees it.

The benefit is that your child gets private email that only they read but you can be sure that they aren't talking to anyone they shouldn't be.

Software for your PC
A good answer to the problem is to install web-filtering software on your own PC. This way you have full control over what information can be viewed by your children.

Most products support multiple family members, so you can be more lenient with a teenager and tougher with a young child.

Take a look at our reviews to see what we thought of the products currently on offer:

Cyberpatrol 6
CyberPatrol 6 is the most family-friendly product on the market. It realises that blocking websites isn't about restricting children's surfing but is designed to protect them.

To this end, the page that is displayed when a site is blocked has a choice of graphics that will appeal to children, such as a horse rider.

This doesn't mean that you lose out on protection, though. After creating a new account for each member of the family, you have to control how they will access the internet.

At the top level, you can place time restrictions so that children can only use the internet for a given amount of time and only at certain times during the day.

Next, you pick the categories of websites and applications to which you want to block access. The latter feature is great for stopping children from talking to strangers using chat programs.

Finally, the software can monitor websites and chat rooms for banned words and phrases, which prevents children from using search engines to find unsuitable content.

Price: £34 for a 12-month subscription - web orders only.
Contact: CyberPatrol
www.cyberpatrol.com
Verdict: Simple, effective, family-friendly web filtering.

EngageIP Web Filtering
EngageIP's web-filtering product is the most simplistic on test. It doesn't support multiple users, so you can only change settings that affect the whole computer.

While this makes configuration a lot easier to deal with, it's considerably less flexible than the other products we looked at, especially if you've got children of different ages.

The software works by allowing and denying categories of websites, such as illegal drugs. By default, the software blocks access to all websites, so you have to manually work out which categories you want to allow.

This can be a troublesome process as you can allow access to one category just to find that a website that should be allowed is then blocked by another category. For example, Computeractive's website is categorised as both News and Information Technology.

Once we got access to our own website, we then found that half the pictures wouldn't load as they fall into other banned categories. It took a lot of hassle to get the system running smoothly and this makes it hard for us to recommend it.
Price: £30
Contact: EngageIP
www.cerberian.co.uk
Verdict: Simplistic web filtering that isn't as versatile as the other products.

Mcafee Parental Controls
Parental Controls is McAfee's protection package for the whole family. After a painless installation process, a wizard guides you through the initial configuration, which includes setting up users for each family member.

This way each child has their own settings that define the type of content they can look at.

McAfee provides five default settings, ranging from content suitable for young children to all content. Once you've picked the nearest setting for a child, you can customise the exact way that the software will block content.

This is likely to take some time thanks to the large number of ways that the software has to protect your children. At the low end, simple web filtering can block entire web pages but Parental Controls can also look at search requests and block content that way.

The software can also restrict access to applications, which is useful for stopping children using instant messaging or chat programs.

Throw in newsgroup filtering and scheduling that can restrict access to the internet at certain times of the day and you can feel a lot safer about the internet.
Price: £20 or £50 with Internet Security 5, which includes a firewall and anti-virus software.
Contact: McAfee 020 7949 0107
www.mcafee.co.uk
Verdict: Simple to use and effective protection for your family.

Net Nanny 5
Net Nanny is the software most commonly associated with safe surfing and with good reason. This is one of the most powerful tools available.

As with other filtering products, it works by creating a user for each member of the family, each with its own filtering preferences. This allows you to restrict younger children more than teenagers, for example.

For each user, it's then a matter of picking the restrictions. This starts with a simple slide bar for picking one of the four levels of blocking: no restrictions, banned content, family-safe websites and block all.

In addition, the more powerful tools come into play. These include blocking all picture files and pop-up windows, and filtering all chat and instant messaging text for harmful words and phrases.

Net Nanny can even restrict applications so that only those that have been deemed safe by a parent can be accessed.

Newsgroups and chat rooms are also covered, with the parent in control of choosing which ones are safe for children to visit.
Price: £34
Contact: Softwair Publishing 0870 527 5186
www.netnanny.com
Verdict: Great protection for all members of the family.

Norton Internet Security 2003
Unlike McAfee, Norton's Parental Controls are only available as part of its Internet Security 2003 suite.

This includes a firewall and anti-virus software as well but, if these are extraneous to your needs, it makes this an expensive way of protecting your children.

Norton's Parental Controls, like other software, requires a user for each member of the family in order to customise settings. It's easy to get rolling straight away by using the provided user types: child, teenager or adult.

Each user has default settings that define the kind of sites that should be blocked. Using the program configuration, you can modify this and choose which websites you want your children to have access to.

In addition, Parental Control can also block access to newsgroups and applications, so you can stop your children from having contact with strangers on the internet.

Unfortunately, the software doesn't check for banned words and phrases in messages or search engines. We found that we could look for pictures using Google's image search without Parental Controls blinking an eye.
Price: £50
Contact: Symantec 020 7616 5600
www.symantec.co.uk
Verdict: Good protection but you have to buy the whole suite.

Zone Alarm Pro with Web Filtering
Opting for Zone Alarm Pro over the free version gives the added advantage of web-filtering software from Cerberian. This is essentially the same software that EngageIP uses, although the Zone Alarm version seems to work a lot better.

It still has the restriction that settings apply to the whole computer and not individual members of the family, but this time there are default settings. These block access to the standard harmful categories of website, such as pornography.

We found these default settings worked better than on EngageIP's version. For example, loading Computeractive's website didn't block any of the pictures.

If the default settings don't suit your needs, then you have full access to block and allow categories as you see fit.

For the smaller family, where you've already got Zone Alarm running, this is an acceptable solution, but it does lack the advanced features of most of the other products on review here.
Price: £40
Contact: Zone Labs
www.zonelabs.com
Verdict: Basic web filtering to suit the smaller family.

WEB BROWSER WORKSHOP

Step 1
To use its built-in filtering, start Internet Explorer and type www.icra.org/_en/icra.rat into the Address bar.

This is a direct link to a download. Click on Save to save the file when prompted - Windows 95, 98 or Me users should save the file to c:/windows/system. Windows 2000 or XP users should save the file to c:/windows/system32.

Step 2
Select Options from Internet Explorer's Tools menu and click on the Contents tab in the dialogue box that appears. Click on the Enable button under Content advisor to turn on Internet Explorer's web filtering.

Step 3
You will now be prompted to enter a password. This is used to prevent your children from modifying the settings that you choose.

Don't forget this password, otherwise you will be unable to change any settings that you've made. You can type in a password hint to refresh your memory in the event that this happens, but don't make the hint something that makes the password obvious. Click on OK to apply the settings.

Step 4
Click the Settings button under Content advisor to configure your browser settings. Click on the General tab and click on the Rating systems button.

Click on the Add button and browse to the icra.rat file downloaded in step 1. Click to select it then click on the Open button. Click on OK to apply the settings.

Step 5
Click on the Ratings tab. The main window displays a list of website categories that you can choose to allow or deny by moving the slide bar.

Selecting any category and clicking on the More info button will let you learn more before you commit to a setting.

Step 6
Click on the Approved sites tab to specifically enter websites that you always want to allow or deny. In the Allow this website box, type in the web address of a website and click on the Always button to give access and on the Never button to deny access.

AOL and MSN

AOL has provided a safe surfing environment for a long time. The AOL browser includes access to safe chat rooms and content. It does mean that you have to change ISP to get full advantage of the features, but it is a very family-friendly service.

Not to be left out, Microsoft has just launched MSN 8. This add-on can run over any standard internet connection and has built-in parental controls and anti-spam technology. It's an easy way of adding safe browsing to any internet connection and costs just £7 a month.

Think U know?
The government has reacted to the online threat with its own awareness scheme. Kicked off by a TV advert, the www.thinkuknow.co.uk website is designed to educate children on the dangers of the online world. It includes a chat room safety guide and what to do if they are being harassed online.

TAKE OFFENCE

If you find any offensive material on the internet, including websites, newsgroups and forums, which you believe breaches UK law, then use the Internet Watch Foundation web page to make a report.

The IWF can only deal with material that sits on servers physically located in the UK but they will make that determination for you.