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Mediabyte |
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Not quite home alone
Publication: Economic Times
Date: March 18, 2001
Software to control a child's Internet access has never been easily available here. But now some companies are giving Indian parents the option of blocking off unsuitable sites.
Of course, you want to give your kids that endless, seamless access to information on the Internet. But you can't help worring about them stumbling on to inappropriate sites - sites that portray pornography, violence or hate.
Parental control is already a big rage in the west - software like Net Nanny, Cyber PetrolSurfwatch and Cybersitter are available to control access to Websites. Infact, this software is popular even among employers who want to ensure that employees don't spend their office hours in unproductive surfing. But with the Internet still being a recent phenomenon in India, the choice here for such software is still limited.
But recently Wipro introduced Net Nanny to the Indian market along with its Netcracker package. P G Ponnapa, chief operating officer, Net Cracker, explains Wipro's forays into this area. In India, our values are such that we feel it is necessary to instill a sense of discipline in children from the very beginning. Thus the need for cyberpatrolling.
Once activated , Net Nanny provides options of customisation whereby the parent can block sites, chat rooms and even words and phrases to keep his child away from the potential dangers of the Internet - all this besides the master list that automatically bans certain URLs. This software also gives parents access control over the child - this means that parents can specify times at which the child can access the Net.
Once the child is logged on, he often tries out new URLs. It's difficult to keep a tab of the new URLs comming up everyday. But Net Nanny has a logsheet that registers all the sites visited and the time, explains Ponnapa. That makes it easy for parents to cross-check later on the sites their child has visited, Ponnapa adds. There are also a customisable message board. For instance if somebody violates security, out pops up a warning saying: Son, dad's watching you!.
Net Nanny has four levels of security depending on the type of monitoring one wants - 1 is the most permissible and 4, the most secured. Once the software is installed in the system, parent will have to log in through a Net Nanny password so that they can have unlimited access to the Net.
According to Ponnapa, the product has indeed generated much interest in households, but there are people who want it free. Priced at $40 abroad, it is heavily subsidised for the Indian market at Rs. 1,300, according to Ponappa. "No, we are not going to loose money on it", says Ponnapa, adding, and that's because it is not a thing to make any money out of. It's for a social cause that we all stand for.
But is there a market for such software in the value-for-money demanding Indian market. Ponappa feels that there is in fact a large potential market in schools, since almost every school now has made computer education compulsory. He also sees a market in offices, especially smallscale industries.
There are very few who are ready to put a figure into the size of the market for such products. But often profit isn't the motive behind introducing such software. Pitara Kids Network Ltd. has on its web site a software called Krowser that replaces the conventional browser (such as Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator) and dynamically checks for the appropriateness of the site being requested by the user. Krowser functions like a browser in every way - one can type in the URL, and click on the links to follow them. The software crosschecks the appropriateness of the site being visited. Says Ajay Jaiman, CEO of Pitara, "As a parent, I am concerned that my child may chance upon objectionable material on the Internet. Yet, I would like to encourage my child to independently explore the Net's vast potential as a tool for information and learning.
The key to Krowser's power as a web guard is its human interface and a backend database of more than 18,000 sites, scanned, reviewed and updated by editors to make sure that the user has access to as much information as possible while filtering out inappropriate material. This database continues to grow everyday. According to Jaiman, Pitara plans to bring out an upgraded version which makes navigation on the Net easier - this will, however, not be free. Jaiman expects a fairly good market for this software but is not ready to put a figure on it.
But J Kesavardhanan, CEO and CTO of K7 computing is indeed very optimistic on the potential in India for software that would help parents control Internet access. K7 is one of the very few Indian anti-virus software companies (brand name: VX 2000) which has withstood competition from Mcafee and Norton. It's launch of an indigenously developed parental control software is scheduled for next month - this product will come with an updated anti-virus engine, and Internet security features as well. The product is expected to be competitively priced against multinational players.
Explains Kesavardhanan: "Considering the Indian psyche, this software indeed has a great deal of potential. Parents in India try to rein in control of their children even after the age of 18 unlike western countries where the children are less restained.
According to Kesavardhanan, there are just a couple of methods used by software companies to ensure that inappropriate sites are not accessed by their children - they either have a comprehensive database comprising URLs of unwanted sites that get blocked the moment it is accessed. The parent can update the list by including URLs to the database. Since this is a tedious method, the latter method is gaining popularity.
In the content scanning method, the software scans for words that might normally appear in pornographic sites and blocks them off. Companies are now working on developing software that scans for images and blocks them too. But the hitch in scanning is that they may not be intelligent enough to identify non-pornographic sites containing such meterial. For example, a dictionary site might contain these words and even contain animals pictures which could be classified as nude pictures. K7 parental control software will be combination of both the features, says Kesavardhanan. Besides this, the software also provides information to the parents on the sites that the kid has been surfing .
Parents can now breathe easy while their kids roam the Net.
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