Internet Filtering

Internet Filtering at Home

Parents/guardians looking to filter their home internet have several options.  We recommend a solution which does not require a software installation on individual devices - such solutions can be easy to circumvent.  

Internet Service Providers

Many internet service providers offer some type of filtering service for a reasonable fee.  You can find out details by contacting your provider's customer service department.  For the major providers in our area, visit:

• Charter Spectrum

• AT&T U-Verse

In Home Filters and Parental Controls

If you are looking for an option outside of what your Internet Provider offers, there are a few choice we would recommend.

• OpenDNS: If your provider doesn't offer filtering or if you would like another option, we recommend openDNS.  The service is easy to set up on your home router.  The basic version of the software is free, but for $20 per year you can subscribe to their premium service - including customer support.

• Circle by Aura: Circle is another option.  It allows you to manage all of your home’s connected devices. With Circle, parents can filter content, limit online screen time and set a bedtime for every device in the home.

• Want to learn more about Filtering and Parental Controls?  Check out this great article, Everything You Need to Know About Parental Controls, from Common Sense Media.

Regardless of the solution you select, it is important to remember - no filter is foolproof.  They cannot take the place of talking to your children about how they use the internet nor your monitoring of their use. If your child has a data plan on their cell phone, they can simply turn off the wi-fi on their device to "get around" the filters.  This applies to both the school and home environment.

Internet Filtering and Portage Public Schools

Several times a year, both staff and parents inquire as to why certain websites are blocked while others are not.  These questions often lead to more general questions regarding how our web filter works and how reliable it is.  What follows is a brief overview of web-filtering methodologies along with some specifics as it applies to Portage.  

The Challenge

It has been estimated that the World Wide Web has over a trillion individual pages (no one knows the exact amount for sure).  It is also estimated that more than 150,000 web pages are added each day.  Given the ever changing content of existing pages and the constant addition of new ones, maintaining an accurate catalog of pages and their content is simply impossible.  Any filtering strategy must acknowledge this fact and adapt as best it can.  The three strategies most commonly used are content screening, whitelisting and blacklisting.

Content Screening

In this strategy, web-content is screened in real time as pages are requested.  In its most basic implementation, should certain keywords or other specific patterns of data appear within the page, the filter prevents the page from loading.  This is the least reliable method.  For example, the filter might be set to block pages that mention the word ‘breast’.  While this might block some pornographic web pages, it would also block access to medical information and poultry-based recipes.  This strategy is also mostly ineffective in evaluating multi-media content.  On the whole, this strategy is rarely used on its own. 

Whitelisting

In a whitelisting strategy, a list of appropriate websites is maintained by the filter, and only pages appearing on the list are accessible on the network.  This is the most foolproof method, as access to any site must be preapproved by the filter’s administrator - although one should remember it is not completely foolproof as nothing prevents the owner of a pre-approved site from adding inappropriate content to said site.  In practice, whitelists are impractical to maintain - there is far too much content on the web for a central source to screen and approve.  As with content-based filters, whitelisting also tends to block access to many useful sources of information.  As such, whitelisting also isn't used very often.  Some applications include workplace computers intended for use with only a few sites (kiosks, point of sale terminals, data entry terminals) and filtering for personal devices assigned to younger learners.  Whitelisting is also used for some multimedia applications.

Blacklisting

In a blacklisting strategy, the filter allows access to any site except for those specifically listed on a ‘do not allow’ list.  This strategy offers the best balance of access versus filtering out inappropriate content and as such is the most commonly deployed filtering strategy in work and school environments.  Should an inappropriate site not appear on the blacklist, the filter’s administrator can quickly append it to the list, making the filter agile in the ever-changing internet environment.  

Portage’s Strategy

In Portage, we use a mix of all three strategies to various degrees (mostly blacklisting).  We subscribe to a content screening service that provides the bulk of our listing of sites to block.  From there, based on feedback from our staff, we have customized the list to add some sites back in and blacklist several others.  We have different tiers of filtering for staff and students.  We also will exclude some sites to protect our internet bandwidth for instructional use.  We routinely inspect our access logs to ensure that the filter is working the way it should, finding approximately two or three sites a year that need to be manually added to our list.

In summary, no system is foolproof.  But, we are confident in our filtering implementation and the safety and security it provides.