TCS - Content Watch

Content Watch

by Don Singleton
Tulsa Computer Society
From the January 2001 issue of the I/O Port Newsletter

James Amburgey (amburgey@juno.com) brought this site to my attention. If you are concerned about pornography or other possibly objectionable material which might be on your machine (perhaps as a result of it being used by your children), there is a free service being offerred by http://www.contentwatch.com/

ContentAudit checks your computer for sites, words, file names-virtually anything that might be objectionable. This process should take less than two minutes. Because the computer cannot check the context of a word, some files it identifies may NOT actually be objectionable. For example, the word "sex" may not be objectionable in a questionnaire when referring to gender.

When ContentAudit locates something questionable on your machine, it displays the URL, word or filename in a basic table. Files that have a higher probability of being objectionable are listed in red.

What are the System Requirements for ContentAudit?

What is questionable?

The research team at ContentWatch, creators of one of the nation's leading solutions to the problems of the Internet, has identified a list of over 500 questionable (meaning possibly objectionable) words. Although these words may also appear in files that are not objectionable, they are frequently associated with known pornographic or dangerous websites.

ContentAudit is free, and it is provided to encourage you to buy either or both optional products they offer: ContentCleanup will allow you to remove objectionable material and ContentWatch offers a Monthly Profile, a feature available nowhere else. Each month an easy-to-read printed report is mailed to you that details all of your computer usage, both online and off, including every attempt made to access objectionable sites from your computer. In addition, the profile will compile Internet and application usage by time of day, as well as documenting the most common sites visited. Further, the profile will compare usage statistics month to month. The value of this feature is that now you have a tool that tells you exactly how your computer is being used, or perhaps misused.

ContentAudit does require one to authorize the installation of an ActiveX control, which normally gives me some concern. I started running a ContentAudit, but abandoned it in the middle because it kept finding all of the words "terrorism" on my computer, because it was looking at the source code for my http://bushsupporter.org/911.htm web site which has links to news items since the 9/11 Terrorist Attack on America.

ContentCleanup costs $19.95
ContentWatch costs $39.95
Both are available for $49.95



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Tulsa Computer Society 01/02/2002
Don Singleton, President