K9 Web Protection

   

              K9 Web Protection 4.2.89

                                 

K9 breaks down Web sites into 24 commonly blocked categories and 44 other categories, plus uncategorized sites and Web ads. The commonly blocked categories include the expected—porn, gambling, nudity, hacking, and so on. The other categories, things like humor, games, and shopping, are probably more useful in the company's business-oriented filtering product. Taking both sets together, that's 66 distinct categories—more than any parental product I've reviewed lately. The closest is Webroot, with 60 categories.

At its out-of-the box default level, the product blocks all 24 of the common categories. Cranking the level up to High adds blocking of chat, newsgroups, and unrated sites. The Moderate level blocks adult content, illegal activity, and security threats in 16 categories. And the Minimal level just blocks porn and security threats in 8 categories. You can click on any category for a pop-up description of just what is and isn't included.

I'm pleased that the product lets you select categories in groups. That's certainly easier than poring over an alphabetic list of categories trying to work out which you want to block. Most users will probably find one of the predefined levels to be suitable. Of course, if you prefer to micromanage your choices you can choose the Custom level. There's also an option to block URLs that contain specific user-defined keywords, though I don't see that as very useful.

If you prefer, you can set the product to monitor all Web surfing without blocking any categories. The log will still list and categorize all sites visited. Note, though, that although the date and time of each site visit is logged, the user account that visited the site is not. That limits the log's usefulness.

Like Norton, K9 applies its blocking at the domain or subdomain level as appropriate. But, like CyberPatrol and Net Nanny, it also has the ability to categorize a page by analyzing its content. The WebPulse application that handles such analysis runs in the cloud, not on the local computer. Valimaki describes WebPulse as "a really accurate AI solution that can categorize content into 45 categories in English and some number of categories in 15 other languages (including Chinese and Japanese)." Impressive!

Like Webroot and Norton, K9 can force kid-friendly "safe search" mode for several popular search engines. It specifically manages Ask, Google, MSN, Yahoo, and others. And you can set it to block use of any non-childproofed search engines.

                                   

                                     

                                           

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