Internet Content Filtering

Learn How to Protect Your Family from the Worst of the Web!

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The Internet is magnificent in its resources for families. Educational resources abound. Kids can easily find help for their homework blues without venturing to the library. Kids can chat with friends from far away for free; friends who, probably just a few years ago, they would never hear from again. And, of course, there s plenty of entertainment to satisfy the whole family once the chores and homework are complete.

However, the Internet can often be an inappropriate place for kids to surf unsupervised. Plenty of content is only appropriate for mature audiences. And, sadly, there are bad seeds , those who the children never should talk to.

Help keep your children away from these unsuitable materials. Many search engines and directories have filters and options that only return pages that have passed a particular profanity or kid-safe filter. These types of filters vary from web site to web site, but may do one of the following:

* Only allow you to search a selection of links picked by the site s editors to be kid-safe or free of profanity.

* Not show links containing profane words, these being words designated by a site to be profane. This list may not contain all possible profane words or combinations.

* Show links containing profane words but block out the profane words with asterisks, dollar signs, or other symbols. Again, the blocked-out words are those the site deems profane and might not include all such words.

Unfortunately, no filter can be 100% accurate.

Here are some search engines that have filters you can enable to try to weed out inappropriate content.

AltaVista
http://www.altavista.com/

Above and to the right of the search query box you can find the link labeled Family Filter . Turn on this filter to cause AltaVista to filter out inappropriate content. Be sure to read the linked-to FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) before using this filter. Again, no family filter is 100% accurate, but it s better than nothing.

Ask Jeeves For Kids
http://www.ajkids.com/

You can provide kids with their very own search butler. Ask Jeeves for Kids is a special version of the popular Ask Jeeves web site geared towards the younger set. It is used the same way as the normal Ask Jeeves just ask a question and click the Ask button.

You will notice the site design is quite different from the main Ask Jeeves. The page is colorful and includes fonts more suited for kids. There are links to games, study tools, news resources, and message boards. Be sure to check out Jeeves hat as you move your mouse over each resource

According to the Parents page, Ask Jeeves For Kids only searches for G-Rated information. However, they do warn that since web sites change, there is no guarantee that adult content cannot slip through the cracks. Still, they do a good job at trying to filter out information, so if you have children surfing the net, you may want to point them over to this popular resource.

Google
http://www.google.com/

Visit the Advanced Search link and take a look at the SafeSearch section. Click the Filter using SafeSearch radio button to cause Google to only returns sites that match Google s SafeSearch filter. This filter attempts to remove material containing pornography or sexual content, but it is not and cannot be 100% accurate. Click the link SafeSearch on this page for more information about this filter.

You can also click the Preferences link from the front page to set preferences on how you want Google to search through documents. From here you can enable the SafeSearch setting by default. These preferences are placed in the form of a cookie stored on your browser, so if you disable cookies your preference choices will not stick. Be sure to press the Save Preferences button when you are done with your choices or they will not stick.

Lycos
http://www.lycos.com/

Click on the Parental Controls link on the front page (located under the search bar), or turn on the Adult Filter from the advanced search page to enable the Lycos SearchGuard . This feature attempts to filter out sites containing inappropriate or offensive material such as adult, violent, hate and weapons-related content . Note that while no filter can be 100% effective this is a good start.

You may also want to visit the following family and kid-friendly Lycos sites:

Lycos Family Zone
http://familyzone.lycos.com/

Lycos Zone (For Kids)
http://lycoszone.lycos.com/

No matter which site you use, realize that no filter can be 100% accurate. All it takes is a little web browser knowledge to defeat cookie-based filters. Inappropriate sites can and sometimes will slip through the cracks . Thus, I recommend that you always supervise your kids Internet usage whenever possible. These filters, however, may make your supervision easier and your entire family s Internet experience more enjoyable without any surprises.

About the Author

This article was written by and copyright 2002 Andrew Malek, Internet Search Guru and author of Find Stuff On the Net, an e-book that can show even beginning computer users how to navigate the Internet without fear. Catch-up with your kids knowledge when it comes to using the net. For further information and free snippets of the book, visit http://www.findstuffonthenet.com/

Learn How to Protect Your Family from the Worst of the Web!

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You spent tireless hours creating your business model, even longer perfecting your website to be the best that it can be. Taking count of your competitors, positioning yourself with a uniqueness that surely could not see you fail.

You agonized for weeks over the perfect website hosting company for your business, and chose the one that guaranteed you 99% uptime (you want your website ‘up’!). You have staff in place, or indeed if working alone, know that you will be your own ‘one-woman’ customer support team.

You have made an executive decision, through the hundreds of business meetings that you have had with yourself (in your own head - whilst falling asleep, in the bath and eating lunch) that you will be providing email sales and email customer support only. After all, if it is good enough for eBay then it is good enough for you yes.

Everything is in place, the site is live, the search engine marketing firm has been contracted for $39.95 a month (you don’t have much of a budget just yet), the advertising is in place and you have decided to do this yourself to save extra money (after all you summarize, why hire a company to look after PPC when you can easily do it yourself right).

It’s Monday, the perfect ‘go-live’ day, 1500 hours and the site has been live 8 hours, your pride and joy is up and running and your dream of making an online business a reality is now yours. You are getting visitors and hey, you are even starting to get sales and it’s all looking good.

You have employed some of the best anti spam/junk mail filter software there is to avoid unwanted distractions whilst you respond to your new customers and your website hosting company also guarantees you the most vigorous defence at server level for unwanted email.

But…suddenly there is a problem, you start receiving emails complaining that you have not replied to other emails, which you had never received. At first you simply thought it was a ‘crazy’ customer or one of those lost emails that never get there that you know the traditional postal service are so well known for.

But….then there are 2 emails complaining of non-response, one from a customer who had bought from you the previous day demanding that if you do not respond immediately that they will charge-back the transaction! Where did that come from, you never received an email but you did receive this email - why was that, this really is coming more of a regular occurrence and something that you need to take action in resolving.

Now, not only are you losing sales by not receiving emails of a pre-sales nature but you are receiving emails from your customers complaining that once they buy from you that you cannot be contacted.

And so it starts, the beginning of the end, a bad reputation for customer support, charged-back transactions that cost you and your now struggling website business additional money and a realization that there seems to be a problem with email, but you do not know what it is.

Ok, so the above might seem a little extreme but we live in an extreme world where just one issue can make or break a company and as a small ‘one-woman’ online business who has spent so much money on search engine marketing, advertising and making your website the best that it can be, you really could do without such issues. You want to be a success, not gain a reputation as one whom provides terrible service.

Where do you look to resolve the issue?

No further than the spam/junk mail filter software you purchased and/or the service mail filters that your website hosting company put in place ‘for your protection’.

The very purpose for which spam/junk mail filters are implemented, being to protect your mailbox from unwanted email, can be the very same good intentions that cause you great issues with your customers and cause annoyance to distraction in resolution.

What is an unwanted email; yes the hundreds of spam emails selling the latest pharmaceutical product from yet another untrained and un-web-educated affiliate. Emails that you never asked for or indeed want - they are so annoying that you ensured that your home PC, which is also used by your 2 kids (12 and 15 years of age) employs the same level of spam email protection as your business PC. You didn’t want your kids to become privy to ‘adult’ spam themed emails that pop through every mail box from uncaring spammers across the world did you.

But wait, this is your business computer and your business website we are talking about now, not your home PC where spam and junk email filters are best put to use. Your business uses email as its main communication tool, is it really a wise idea to put your faith in a piece of software or your website hosting companies default mail filters. Should you not really take on the ownership of deciding what is and what is not junk email, and the question to really ask oneself is, can your website business really afford to put the decision of what should and what should not arrive in your email box.

Regardless of how ‘intelligent’ the spam filter is, how much control you have over it, or indeed how much control you do not have over it if a default feature of your website hosting email accounts, any website business worth its salt needs at the very least to consider all of the factors that make up this fundamental business decision - to filter, or not to filter.

Have you run all appropriate tests? Can you receive emails from Hotmail, Yahoo and other free web accounts? What happens if an attachment comes with the email, and are there any kind of content filters or ‘auto-responder’ issues to think about. What about the different ISP’s, can you receive from AOL users - or more importantly sometimes, can AOL users receive your emails.

Explore the next set of issues, perhaps you can receive all emails, but what happens if your customer is using s spam/junk email filter and they cannot receive your reply. The nightmare scenario then of you actually responding to your customers contact emails but because of their ISP or junk mail filter they cannot receive your replies, have you tested this, have you tested the content of your emails? If you lace HTML or URL’s within the content is that accepted…yes these are all issues that you should have considered before your website even went live but this is not a well documented or well discussed topic.

Yet, this should a subject of conversation, it should be a topic of interest and it certainly should be something that is addressed as part of every website implementation plan.

Do not let a spam or junk email filter ruin your business. Get it setup properly, with thorough implementation and gain knowledge of how to operate it correctly. Don’t let technology take over by simply selecting the ‘default’ option.

NOTE: Not all website hosting companies implement anti-spam filters by default. If in doubt, ask. This article does not assume that spam/junk email filters will ruin a business, only that the business in question should be thoroughly knowledgeable of any issues when running such software - and where implementation and spam control is available that these are properly set up.
About the Author

Suzzi Law is the quality and control marketing arm of www.servicewrap.net, with many years experience in undertaking search engine ranking services for hundreds of companies worldwide - without real visitors it will not matter if you have email communication issues.

Learn How to Protect Your Family from the Worst of the Web!

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If you have an Internet business, then you have a need for quality, fresh content. It has been said that the more content means a greater chance of attracting web visitors.

So basically, more content means more visitors which means more m*ney!

But what if you really hate writing or can’t think of ways to get more content?

If that is the case, then here are six great places where you can easily add quality content to your website.

Google Alerts

Google has a service that sends news, press releases, and website information to your email account. Easy to set up, you enter a search phrase and Google Alerts will send you updates about that specific topic. You easily take this information and create a 100-150 word summary that can be entered into a blog or news section.

To get started, you can check-out Google Alerts: http://www.google.com/alerts

Public Domain

There are tons of books, magazines and websites full of great content that can be easily copied to your website. Called Public Domain Works, this is content that is written by someone else which has no copyright protection. You have the legal-right to take it and use it for your own purpose. By using public domain works, you can easily create sites with thousands of pages.

Some of the better places to find Public Domain works are http://www.firstgov.gov/ or http://www.gutenberg.org.

Articles

By using other people’s articles, you can easily add thousands of pages to your website. If you go to an article directory, you can find a large variety of web articles that are related to your topic. In addition, most of these articles are quite informative and provide quality content to your web visitor.

Two of the better places to find quality web articles are http://www.goarticles.com and http://www.ezinearticles.com

Outsource Your Content

If you have a little c*sh to spend, you can easily hire someone else to write tons of web content. What I usually do is find about 30-50 profitable keywords in my niche and hire someone to write an optimized article of 400-600 words. Usually you can find authors for around $8-$10 per article. So for a small-investment, you can get great content that is unique and optimized for search engines.

Here are few places where you can find quality (and affordable) people to write content articles: http://www.elance.com and http://www.rentacoder.com

Private Label Resale Rights

One of the “hidden” places to get quality content is through websites that offer private label resale rights. With private label rights you get full access to ebooks and articles that are written by other people. You have full permission to change or present the content in any way that you see fit. So if you find an ebook with 101 tips on a topic, you can easily turn this material into a series of web pages. You can also take this one step further and create an autoresponder sequence that is tied into your major affiliate-program.

One of the best places I use to get private label rights is http://www.nicheology.com

RSS Feeds

A great way to get fresh content is to have a RSS Feed installed on your website. Basically a RSS Feed is a tool that pulls news items from a website or blog. A great trick is to place the RSS Feed on all your web pages, so search engines see that your content is being consistently updated.

What I usually do is use a feed that pulls entries from my own blog. That way, I can control the content and amount of times that it is being updated.

One of the better places to find a good RSS Feed for your website is http://www.pheeds.com.

Although I have given you six great places to get content, there is one thing you should know about using it. Many search engines penalize websites for having duplicate content. So if you know that this information is listed on other sites, you need to change or add to the content. What I usually do is add to or alter about 25% of the content. This will help you avoid the duplicate content filter that is used by major search engines.

By utilizing all six of these content sources, you can easily build up a site filled with thousands of pages of fresh quality content that will attract tons of web-traffic. Once this is done, you will see your income soar through the roof.

About the Author

Scott J. Patterson is not that smart, yet he earns over $12,000 a month from his online businesses. To find out how YOU can build a profitable Internet business, download his fr*e ebook, The Secret-Guide to Home Businesses: http://www.duncemoney.com/content.html

Learn How to Protect Your Family from the Worst of the Web!

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Coping With Spam Filters
by Laurie Rogers Copyright July 2002

If you haven’t yet heard about the chaos that Spam Filters
are currently causing for publishers, then I am about to tell
you EVERYTHING you’ll need to know on this subject. Many
of our fellow publishers disregard the fact that Spam Filters
DO in fact exist. For some reason just do NOT want to face
the fact that, they are DESTROYING their businesses.

I write a column on Spam for DEMC small business ezine, so
I do consider myself to be well educated on this subject. If
you have any questions about what I am about to tell you,
feel free to contact me at: http://www.OptinFrenzy.com

Now let’s begin.

Spam Filters are EVERYWHERE online whether we like it or
not they are. And they are becoming more dominant in all
aspects of the internet, through ISP’s, webhosts and the
chances are, one person in three is using some type of a
filtering device. They are inexpensive to purchase and so
it makes it fairly EASY for the average “Joe” to buy one.

And chances are that your ISP or web host probably uses
them and you are NOT even aware of it. Personally, I do
advise that you contact them to ask them about it and
ask them to REMOVE them from your account immediately.
Now, here is why I suggest that you do this, Spam Filters
are NOT 100% fool proof, in fact they have a tendency to
block out your LEGITIMATE email. Anyone who tells YOU
otherwise is in some serious DENIAL.

I’ve personally taken the time to test almost EVERY Spam
Filtering program that there is currently available online.
And what I saw was absolutely mortifying to say the least.
I ran over 100 different types of emails and newsletters all
through each system and 9 times out of ten, it resulted in
being marked as spam. Needless to say, by the end of the
day I was NOT impressed with my discovery.

Most of these programs are designed to target newsletters
specifically, because they have the words “subscribe” and
“unsubscribe” black marked. Meaning, that any peices of
email that contain those two words are “marked” as being
“SPAM”. This is especially predominant in Spam Killer which
is now owned by McAfee. They also LURE publishers into
what they refer to as being “Spam Traps” (which they do
openly admit -right on their web site), so they can create
more filters DAILY based on ezine/email content. And YES,
I did say DAILY!

Now that I’ve probably scared the wits out of you, here
are a few things that you can do and they will require a
bit of added work on your part.

1.) Make your ezine available in 3 different forms, if it at
all possible. Email it directly to your subscribers, put it on
an autoresponder and make it available online. My good
friend jL Scott (owner of iCop) does this and it covers all
of the bases to ENSURE your readers get your ezine. It’ll
also give you an idea of HOW many people actually read
your ezine.

2.) Ask your readers, IF they have had ANY problems in
receiving your ezine. If they have, start keeping a log of
these instances, if your ezine has been marked as being
spam through their email client ask them for a copy of it
for your records. You MAY want to TRY contacting their
ISP and try talking to them about it, ensure that YOU
maintain your “professionalism” in doing so, as this could
create problems for your subscriber. Advise ALL of your
subscribers to contact their ISP’s and ask them if they
are in fact using filters on their email.

3.) Keep financial loss records that you’ve encountered
because of Spam Filters. And remember everything is of
a monetary value including your ezine.

Although there is no fool proof method of avoiding Spam
Filters, there is currently a pending law suit against the
creators of these programs. So if you do have a case or
have proof that you have been filtered, falsely accused
etc. I recommend that you go and file a report asap at:
http://www.e-crucible.org

Article by Laurie Rogers Copyright 2002 All Rights Reserved

About the Author

Laurie Rogers is co-author of the Ezine Resource Guide,
http://www.zineadz.com/erg.html She is the owner of Optin
Frenzy - a paid list building program for ezine publishers
http://www.optinfrenzy.com You can obtain more of Laurie’s
articles at: mailto:ezinearticles@optinfrenzy.com