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Please note: The reports in this section are not product reviews or tests; they're meant to spotlight options for you to consider, as well as milestones in children's online-safety technology development. Comments from readers on their own experiences with these products and services are most welcome - and, with your permission, we publish them. Do email us your own product reviews anytime!
From our overview of new kinds of online-safety options - and products that represent them - on display at the June '99 Digital Kids conference in San Francisco...
Kids' ISPs (June 18, '99 issue)
This is a significant jump up from so-called "server-based filtering" - filtering that's done by software on the Internet service provider's server rather than by software on your PC at home. An example is a just-announced, soon-to-be-available service (call it "vaporware"?) called Kids On-Line America, "KOLA" for short.
Because it's somewhat open to the Internet (depending on age level and parents' decisions), it couldn't be considered as "safe" as the closed services, but parents will still be given a lot of control over their kids' experiences, as well as degrees of control. The categories KOLA gears content and safety controls to are "Kids" (5-6), "Junior" (7-9), "Teen" (10-13), "Senior" (14-17), and "Parents." For "Kids," parents can approve a list of e-mail correspondents, choose and edit lists of sites to be filtered, establish an "e-allowance" for the e-store, etc. Another interesting safety feature we've not heard of before (as such) is KOLA's plan to seek subscribers through corporations, community organizations, and schools, so new subscribers can be verified to be who they say they are (no 69-year-old people posing as children). When KOLA is a full-blown ISP (slated for the end of the year), it will cost $24.95/mo.
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