Parental Filter 3

Publisher's description of Parental Filter

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Parental Filter is a freeware porn blocker. It specializes in blocking porno Web sites nothing more, nothing less. Sometimes kids come over your house and they say can we go in the Internet, and you think what if porno sites start popping up. This software stops that from happening. Version 3 includes unspecified updates.

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Editor's review of Parental Filter

Blocking porn may be this application's target, but it seems to arrest online access all around.

Parental Filter uses Allow and Ban lists to stop pornographic Web sites from loading on your PC. Its interface is straightforward, though it's crude and could stand some sprucing up. Initiating the program's filters is pretty effortless; simply click a button to enable either list. The control lists are kept in Notepad files for you to add or delete entries. Parental Filter uses IPs rather than domain names to sort out porn sites so as not to miss any associated links. A gargantuan list of banned IPs is included in the program.

Surfing was pretty taxing while this application was in effect, though. Page after page of clean sites had difficulty loading and eventually produced error messages. Once we disabled the ban list, the trouble ceased. Parental Filter guards your configurations with a user-defined password, although we were able to uninstall the app without it. We would like a few more parental control features, but that's the least of this program's problems. Free, yes, but unless you want to bar Internet access altogether, you'll need a program that isn't this severe.

User reviews of Parental Filter

• Average user rating: out of 46 votes
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  Parental Filter

  Enough Cheese To Start A Pizza Parlor!

  by: Toulinwoek on 08-Mar-2007 03:38:53 PM

  Pros: It blocks sites containing objectionable content, redirecting the browser to a page on the publisher's web site (or a site or sites of your choosing), where you're presented with encouraging messages.

  Cons: It's about as unintuitive as it can be. It blocks sites without telling you why, or what on the pages caused the block. Of course, on some sites it's obvious, but it blocked one page because of a news article that was simply providing advice to fathers about how to raise their daughters. Apparently, it saw "Dads" and "Daughters" in the same sentence and assumed the worst! It also blocked a couple of sites that were just file download sites (like, well, download.com!). The only thing I could find on one blocked page (had to terminate the program first) was a program named "Crazy Stuff" Other than that, it blocks sites seemingly at random with no explanation. This is no good. It's supposed to enhance your browsing by blocking objectionable stuff, not degrade your browsing experience.

  It's a free program, so in this case, you get what you pay for. Programs like this give free software a bad name.

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  Parental Filter

  this thing is a menace

  by: Valor_00 on 17-Dec-2006 04:58:51 AM

  Pros: 000000 nothing

  Cons: it totally shutdown internet activity it wouldn't even allow its self to go to it own website

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  Parental Filter

  slows cable internet down to slower than dial up speed

  by: gigi0014 on 18-Feb-2008 07:05:23 PM

  Cons: slows cable internet down to slower than dial up speed

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