Net ratings shelter kids

Photo / Dean Purcell

The responsibility of policing children's access to the internet can weigh heavily on the shoulders of parents. But, now, British internet provider Tibboh aims to relieve parents of some of that burden.

Tibboh is classifying web pages according to a ratings system similar to that used in the world of film: U, PG, 12, 15 and 18. And, so, if the internet provider rates a website as 15, its filters will prevent a 12-year-old from accessing it.

The idea of implementing film-style classifications to online gaming was a key recommendation of a government-commissioned report in 2008. But ratings for websites have remained unexplored.

Tibboh has managed to steal a march on the main British ISPs by being the first to work closely with the British Board of Film Classification.

How does it work? Tibboh offers a mobile broadband package through Vodafone so the internet is accessed via a USB dongle or a SIM card for a mobile device.

Each child in the household can have their own login and password to access a BBFC-rated internet experience their parents have deemed appropriate for them.

Social networking sites can then be made unavailable to under-12s, teenagers can't access illegal download sites and obscene music lyrics are filtered for the very young. Three billion web locations have already been rated, with thousands of new assessments made daily.

One core technology employed by Tibboh is Netsweeper, a filtering system that's used in British schools. Netsweeper sits alongside Tibboh's Filtersafe Plus, which blocks attempts by "adventurous children" to circumvent the system.

In many households the child is the resident IT specialist, with access to passwords and knowledge of web workarounds, such as proxies, that are little more than a black art to adults.

David Miles, director of the Family Online Safety Institute, welcomes Tibboh.

"There's no doubt that parents are looking for a commonality between DVD or video game classification and the net," he says, "and Tibboh should be commended for this."

However, he points out that filtering systems are not without their flaws, as many teachers have found when trying to access material at school that's related to their own teaching syllabuses.

Miles also stresses how Web 2.0 is radically altering challenges faced by those looking after the welfare of children online.

"The relatively simple process of filtering material coming in now has to deal with stuff going out, because young people are creating material of their own."

The most prominent example of this is on Facebook, which has been criticised over its refusal to implement a "panic button" that can take children to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection ( website if they encounter anything alarming.

While CEOP is still campaigning for the panic button, Tibboh have solved the problem by overlaying a CEOP button on every website that children browse.

Miles' conclusion is that while Tibboh's service looks "pretty good", open discussion with children about the unpleasant side of the internet is the crucial element that binds the technology together.

And the parent's view? Father Hamish Thompson says, "Keeping track of internet filtering, passwords and various restrictions, is hard to keep on top of. So yes, it sounds like a good idea."

- INDEPENDENT