OS/2 Shareware BBS: 35 Internet/35-Internet.zip/wwwos2.zip/parental.hlp

OS/2 Help File | 1998-07-31 | 17KB | 255 lines

ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1. General ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

This page of the Parent Watch Options notebook lets you specify your Parent
Watch Password and globally turn the Parent Watch features on and off.

The Last Restricted Web Page Explanation button will bring up a message box
which tells you the last web page that got blocked, and why it was blocked. For
example, whether it contained a 1-900- phone number, or had a higher Pattern
Analysis score than your threshold setting, etc.

When parental controls are active, we suggest that you have a Shadow in your
OS/2 Startup folder to start WebWilly Watch automatically every time you start
your computer, so that no one has the opportunity to use a web browser without
WebWilly watching it. WebWilly Watch will refuse to close without the password,
when the Parent Watch features are active, to further prevent unauthorized web browsing.

Many other features such as Page Mining and the monthly archive log files are
also password-protected when the Parent Watch features are active. Also, the
settings which can be used to turn off the logging are disabled, so that no one
can prevent WebWilly from keeping a record of all web pages visited unless the
owner of the password wants it that way. Three pages of the properties notebook
are also disabled so that a child can't configure WebWilly to be unable to
contact the web browser or web servers. If you need to change these settings,
just turn off the Parent Watch option, then make the changes, and turn it back on.


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 2. Prevent Text ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

This page of the Parent Watch Options notebook lets you specify whether or not
you want WebWilly Watch to prevent certain strings of text from being entered
into web browser windows, such as entry fields on web page forms, chat room
windows, etc. If you do enable this feature, then the list box allows you to
specify the strings you want to be forbidden. If such a string is typed into a
field in a browser window, WebWilly Watch will immediately replace the string
with XXXX.

The most likely use for this Parent Watch feature is to prevent a child from
divulging private information such as his street address. A string that you
would type into the list box here, might be 123 Main. The longer your string,
the greater the possibility that it might be slightly different from what the
child types; for example, if the string is 123 Main St., then the string won't
match if the child only types 123 Main. The shorter your string, the greater
the chance that it will prevent things from being typed that aren't part of
what you wanted to prevent. For example, if the string is Main, then the child
won't be able to type any phrase with the word main in it, even if it has
nothing to do with a street name.

The strings here are treated as words. That is, if a specified string is Smith,
typing blacksmith would not trigger it because there is no delimiting character
(a space or punctuation) between black and smith. If you want a string to
trigger WebWilly even when it is typed as part of a larger word, precede it
with an asterisk (*). For example, the string *smith will prevent a user from
typing not only Smith, but also blacksmith.

It is very possible that the text you want WebWilly Watch to block could be
typed as the very last characters in a web page form field. Therefore, the
program cannot wait to see what is typed next before changing a forbidden word
to XXXX. Which means if a word starts with a forbidden string, you won't be
able to type the word because what you're typing will change to XXXX before you
get to finish. For example, if Smith is forbidden, then before you can type the
second s in Smithsonian, the beginning of the word will have already changed to
XXXXX, and by the time you look at what you've typed, it will say XXXXXsonian.
A workaround is that you can type sonian, and then put your cursor before the s
and type Smith. By the time the string Smith appears on the screen, it will
already have another alphabet character right next to it (the s), so WebWilly
will know not to treat it as if it were just the forbidden string.


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 3. Prevent URLs ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

This page of the Parent Watch Options notebook lets you turn on the WebWilly
Watch feature which prevents specified URLs (web page addresses) from being
displayed in your browser. Conversely, you can configure the program to allow
the display of only the specified URLs and no others.

When the radio button is set to Enable blocking of urls including those
specified below, then any URL that tries to display, whose address starts with
one of the specified strings, will be prevented from displaying. The specified
strings in this case are not taken only from the list box on this page, but
also includes a list which is provided by the program, internally. (See below.)

The phrase "starts with", in the explanation above, is not entirely accurate.
To clarify, the program ignores http://, www., and http://www. at the beginning
of a URL before comparing it to the items in the list. If the remainder of the
address starts with one of the strings, then the web page will be blocked.

If you want a page to be blocked if its address contains the string (as opposed
to starting with the string), just include an asterisk (*) at the beginning of
the string. For example, use the string *sex rather than just sex.

If you want to enable a particular web page whose URL contains a string which
would cause WebWilly to block it, you can type that URL in the list box with a
minus (-) sign before it, to tell WebWilly to go ahead and allow that page
instead of blocking it. For example, if you had *sex in the list to make
WebWilly block sites which have sex anywhere in their addresses, but you needed
to be able to reach www.sexaa.org, then you would add -sexaa.org to your list
box. This will prevent the www.sexaa.org site from being blocked based on its
URL or any other reason that WebWilly might have found for blocking it.

When the top radio button is set to Disable blocking of urls, then web pages
will not be treated differently based on certain strings being found in their
URL addresses; this feature will be entirely disabled.

When the radio button is set to Only display urls containing the following
text, then instead of forbidding certain URLs from displaying, the program will
allow the specified ones and forbid all others. Note that any URL which starts
with the specified text will be allowed, not just the specified page itself.
That is, if you specify www.aacme.com here, then all pages on the Aacme web
site will be allowed. If you specify www.aacme.com/special here, then only the
pages in the /special directory of the Aacme site will be allowed. If you want
to allow only the Aacme home page and no other pages on the site, then you must
explicitly specify the home page's name (which would probably be
www.aacme.com/index.html), since that exact string won't appear in the URL of
any other page on the site or anywhere else. When this setting is in use, the
Pattern Analysis feature is not applied, even if its checkbox appears to be enabled.

When WebWilly prevents a forbidden URL from displaying, it does so by replacing
whatever's in the browser window, with its own web page which informs the user
that WebWilly Watch has blocked the web page. If you prefer, the When a
Restricted URL is found setting at the bottom of the page will let you tell
WebWilly Watch to display a particular web page of your own choosing instead of
that one. This setting also applies to the Pattern Analysis and Extras features.

You can use the feature on the Update page of this notebook to get newer
versions of the URL list files whenever InnoVal updates them. The list files
are encrypted in the hidden URLLIST subdirectory of your WebWilly directory.


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 4. Pattern Analysis ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

This page of the Parent Watch Options notebook lets you enable or disable the
Parent Watch feature which forbids the display of web pages based on an
analysis of their contents. Each entry in the list of patterns includes both
the string for which to search, and a numeric score for that string. For
example, perhaps the word sex has a score of 2 and the phrase hot girls has a
score of 4. In that case, a page which contained both of those strings but no
other specified strings would have a score of 6. If you had your Pattern
Thresholds setting set to 6 or lower, WebWilly would prevent that page from
displaying. If you had the threshold setting set to 7 or higher, then WebWilly
would not prevent the display of that page (at least, not on the basis of the
Pattern Analysis).

The string patterns and corresponding pattern scores, which are used for this
content analysis, are not taken only from the list box on this page, but also
includes a list which is provided by the program, internally. (See below.) As
well as blocking the display of the page immediately, when its Pattern Analysis
score exceeds your specified threshold setting, the program also adds the
domain/directory name to the list of forbidden URL addresses on the Prevent
URLs page; this way the entire directory full of web pages is blocked, unless
of course you remove that URL from the Prevent URLs list again.

How do you add a string and a corresponding numeric score to the list? By
placing a colon (:) and the number at the end of the string. For example, if
you want to add the word hooker with a score of 3, you would type hooker:3 into
the list box. If you want to use a score of 2, you can leave off the :2 from
the end, since 2 is the default score. Note: If you ever want to type a string
which has a colon (:) in it, then you must add another colon and a score to the
end, even if the score you want to use is 2, so that the program doesn't
mistake whatever comes after the first colon for your score.

Words and phrases can also have negative values. For example, a page which
contains the word anal but also contains retentive, is probably
psychology-related rather than something about anal sex. So, while anal might
have a score of 2, it would be cancelled out by retentive having a score of -2.

The Maximum amount of each page to examine setting lets you specify how much of
a page should be analyzed before deciding whether or not it should be blocked.
If you have a fast computer, you can set it all the way up to 20 kilobytes
without slowing things down. However, if the server is slow enough that
WebWilly times out before it has retrieved that much of the page, it will
examine however much the server had sent before the timeout. This means that
once in a while, the amount examined may be less than this setting. Most web
pages which contain material that needs to be blocked, contain enough
blockworthy data within the first 2 kilobytes to cause the program to block
them, so there is rarely a need to spend processing power searching a larger
portion of each page. This setting applies not only to the pattern matching
feature, but also to the features on the Extras page of this notebook.

The bottom setting on the Prevent URLs page lets you specify what should be
shown in the web browser whenever WebWilly blocks a page based on the Pattern Analysis.

You can use the feature on the Update page of this notebook to get newer
versions of the pattern list files whenever InnoVal updates them. The list
files are encrypted in the hidden PATTERNS subdirectory of your WebWilly directory.

No Pattern Analysis is done when the radio button at the top of the Prevent
URLs page is set to Only display urls containing the following text. This is
because you're in complete control of which pages can be viewed when you use
that setting. Therefore, there's no need to waste processing power on Pattern
Analysis in that case. After all, it does take more power than any other
WebWilly feature.


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 5. Extras ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

This page of the Parent Watch Options notebook lets you enable and disable some
of the features which block web pages based on certain contents. The setting at
the bottom of the Pattern Analysis page of this notebook, which lets you
determine how much of each page to examine, applies to these features as well
as to the Pattern Analysis feature. The bottom setting on the Prevent URLs page
lets you specify what should be shown in the web browser whenever WebWilly
blocks a page based on any of these features.

The Block pages with 900 telephone numbers setting makes WebWilly prevent the
display of web pages that contain 1-900- telephone numbers.

The Block pages with 800, 877 or 888 telephone numbers setting makes WebWilly
prevent the display of web pages that contain toll free telephone numbers.

The Block pages from IP address (numeric) sites setting makes WebWilly prevent
the display of web pages from any domain name which is only an IP address. That
is, with something like 123.456.789.012 in place of something like
www.domainname.com. Many pornographic sites use such domain names, and it is
rather rare for other sites to do so.

The Block pages containing forms setting makes WebWilly prevent the display of
web pages that contain forms. This may have undesired results, though, as some
sites use a form in the context of offering a choice of options (where other
sites might use links that look like buttons instead), not just in the context
of asking for private information. In fact, all the search engine sites use
forms. But you can use this setting if you want to, and still allow the use of
such search engines, by adding your favorite search engines' URLs to the list
box on the Prevent URLs page with a minus (-) sign.

The Block direct viewing of images setting makes WebWilly prevent the display
of a web object that is only an image. That is, many images are displayed on
the web as part of a web page, but sometimes there will be a link to an image
file rather than to a web page containing the image file. This setting should
be used with caution, because while pornographic sites often use this method to
display their pictures, non-pornographic sites sometimes do, too, and WebWilly
won't know the difference so it will block them all.


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 6. Startup Log ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

This page of the Parent Watch Options notebook lets you view the log of
WebWilly Watch startups and shutdowns. If you have a lot more startups than
shutdowns, then it may be that someone is using a technical trick to close the
program, without it knowing it's being closed so that it can prompt for the
password, so that he can browse the web unmonitored. But it may simply be that
some program had crashed and the computer had to be rebooted without a graceful shutdown.

When you leave this notebook page, the program checks the size of the log file.
If it's more than 100 entries long, it prunes the file to the most recent 50 entries.


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 7. Update ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

This page of the Parent Watch Options notebook lets you retrieve updated list
files, for the Prevent URLs and Pattern Analysis features of WebWilly Watch,
from the WebWilly web site. The Update Script File setting tells WebWilly the
name of the first file it should download, and that file will tell WebWilly
what other files to retrieve from the site; you will probably never need to
change this