Blocking access to unwanted web sites and content can be described as a number of things such as web filtering, content filtering and information filtering. There are a number of software programmes on the market today that filter web site requests before delivering you to the web site. This web filtering is mainly used within businesses and corporations as well as schools and by parents in the home, all of which is done with good reason.
In the World Wide Web today there are over 4.2 million active pornography sites and countless indecent sites which encourage violent behaviour and contain malicious content. All of this content is indecent to children and numerous working hours are lost every day due to employees browsing such sites.
The Internet has opened up a whole new world to businesses providing them with an extra form of communication via emails and bringing them a lot more customers thanks to company websites. It provided a whole new marketing strategy. However as the Internet grew businesses faced new problems. Spam emails and viruses became an all too real headache and then it was discovered that over 52% of businesses reported a misuse of the Internet amongst employees but do not fear as all of this can be stopped by a simple piece of computer software.
Web filtering scans the pages of a website to check for indecent, adult or malicious content. On a computer that has web filtering, every web site request is scanned before you are delivered to your desired destination. If however the site you are trying to access does hold indecent, adult or malicious content you will be blocked from gaining access to it. With web filtering content you have a management system from which you can control what content your employees or your child can gain access to. A good management system will also display a log which will state what sites people have tried to gain access to and if they have tried to download and content, which is another aspect you can prevent through using a web filtering software.
The downloading of music, applications and videos can also be blocked through a web filtering software. By blocking downloads as well as certain web sites you are making sure bandwidth isn’t taken up unnecessarily, you will free up your IT systems and protect users from accessing potentially offensive material and of course it means that all those wasted hours that employees spent browsing the Internet for personal use will be used in a more productive manner.
Using a web filtering software doesn’t affect the speed and efficiency of your Internet connection as you won’t realise a difference within it. Your web filtering software will also be automatically activated every time that you connect to the Internet, giving you non stop protection against indecent, adult or malicious content.
If your business has been suffering due to continuous misuse of the Internet or if your bandwidth has been taken up by the downloading of music, film and applications then web filtering software could be the answer that you are looking for.
Helen is the web master of MySpamBin, home of all your
Web Filtering needs.
