Web snooping software minds its Ps and Qs

WHAT WITH the Interweb housing its fair share of dodgy material and all, finding a way to prevent children accessing adult sites or fellow users accessing inappropriate sites can be difficult.

Securus is an Internet monitoring system that keeps a close eye on the actual text of a site as opposed to images writes Tim Smith. If a word or phrase that it recognises is found, it will take a screenshot.

The software costs £40 and comes with a list of preset keywords to look out for, but and you can add words to the list in case there are specific worries you might have.

The default behaviour of Securus is to alert the user when a suspicious phrase is recognised with a splash screen. This screen can be removed for more discreet monitoring or locked with a password.

You can even get it to shut down the application that produced the offending text, this is not recommended unless very young children are using the computer.

Securus runs as a program rather than a service, but this did not seem to make it any less secure on the host computer. Attempts to stop it (such as via the Task Manager) failed and it's only possible to deactivate it with a password.

Passwords in Securus are not case sensitive, but once they are set they cannot be retrieved. And it is not possible to uninstall Securus without deactivating it first, which requires the password.

The web interface is accessed via an icon in the Notification area. Plenty of help is provided, although there should be more emphasis on prompting users to change the default password - without a secure password, there's not much point in using the software.

The web-log only records sites visited with Internet Explorer. Securus says it is working on support for Mozilla Firefox, but any key phrases displayed are still recognised and recorded.

Securus is best suited where there is a reasonable dialogue with the users being monitored, although the lockdown options should give peace of mind should communications break down.

By concentrating on text rather than fancy and unreliable image recognition, Securus is a serious tool and one that will appeal to anxious parents. ?

L'INQ
Spex, ratings, etc. at PCW