Filtering is a process whereby somebody's access to Internet content is censored by parents, an institution, an employer, or the state. As we will demonstrate, children are not the only ones being protected, nor are adult sites the only sites being filtered. Censorware is a software product that is installed on a PC to facilitate filtering. Commonly used censorware products include CyberPatrol , Cybersitter, X-Stop, Bess, Safe Surf, Net Nanny and many others. Censorware employs a variety of technological tricks to achieve the desired results.
Most products rely on an encrypted list of blocked sites.
Others rely on keyword blocking and still others use mroe advanced schemes. Censorware that use lists of blocked sites rely on the software company to provide regular uodates of the block list. The block lists are created by robots that search the web and look for certain keywords, teams of humans who surf the web all day, or a combination of both. For more information on how filters technically work, see the CSPR FIltering FAQ . There is no widely accepted name for this software.