Patent ID: 7334037

Claim:
A method of controlling access to web sites, the method comprising the acts of: using an intervening control layer to intercept a network address being passed to a transport layer process from a socket services process; determining if the intercepted network address is indicated in a local cache of permissible content; permitting the intercepted network address to be passed to the transport layer process if the network address is indicated in the local cache of permissible content; if the local cache of permissible content does not indicate the intercepted network address, contacting a monitoring server to determine if access to the intercepted network address is permissible, if indicated as permitted by the monitoring server, permitting the intercepted network address to pass to the transport layer process and updating the local cache to indicate the intercepted network address, and blocking the intercepted network address from passing to the transport layer process if indicated as blocked by the monitoring server.