…a Wall Street Journal columnist’s test of filtering software. After MSN and AOL’s parental controls, tech columnist Walt Mossberg and his assistant Katie Boehret favored FilterLogix. “In our tests, CyberPatrol and FilterLogix did the best job of weeding out bad sites, though we preferred FilterLogix, because it required the least tweaking [they’re smart – that’s important to parents]. Net Nanny failed to block some blatantly inappropriate Web pages, so we can’t recommend it.” But they only looked at three filters (by installing them on three computers and trying “to call up as many revolting Web sites as possible”). Testing filtering software and services is a huge headache, probably one reason why Consumer Reports does it so seldom and even PC Magazine does it only annually. Net Family News doesn’t have the resources to test software, but here are two new options that I’ve written about this year, including one specifically for families with high-speed connections. PC Magazine tested eight other products this summer, and its top pick was CyberSitter 9.0. For the tougher job of IM filtering, PC Magazine mentions SurfControl’s product in an earlier article (most filtering products simply allow parents to turn instant messaging and file-sharing off altogether).
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