iShield FAQ's

What's so special about iShield™?
It's the ONLY software capable or monitoring what's going on within the browser.

What does iShield™ do?
Image Blocking - iShield™ replaces any porn image with a customized non-pornographic image.
Popup Warning - If you prefer, iShield™ can simply trigger a warning message when it detects a web page which contains pornographic material, letting the end-user know that the incident has been logged.
URL Logging - iShield™ records the URLs of any web-pages browsed that it has determined to be pornographic. The iShield™ administrator can view the log of these pages.
Site Lists - iShield™ can create personalized 'white lists' of sites that bypass the image analysis or 'black lists' of sites that are automatically blocked, regardless of content.

How is iShield™ different from other Filtering Software?
Most filters are dependent on lists of bad web-sites, so they can only restrict access to known pornographic sites. Since new pornographic sites are created daily, this creates a problem of filters constantly being out of date. iShield™, however, does not depend on lists or databases to provide protection. Instead, it quickly analyzes each page as it is loaded, scans for pornographic images, and then blocks them. iShield™ also quickly scans for known porn 'keywords' that may appear in the code or text of the page, and will instantly block an entire site if necessary. This means that iShield™ is always up to date, with no recurring subscription or update fees.

Will iShield™ filter my email account?
iShield™ will screen any email account that is checked through a web browser. This includes domains like hotmail.com, gmail.com, yahoo.com, etc., as well as any other account accessed through a web interface. It will not filter accounts checked through stand alone mail clients such as Outlook and Eudora.

Will iShield™ slow down my browsing speed?
iShield™ has no effect on your internet connection speed. You might notice a slight delay (about one second) on image heavy pages such as Google image searches or 'thumbnail' pages as the files are analyzed. The length of any delay is dependent on the speed of your CPU, amount of RAM memory available, etc.

How does iShield™ detect explicit images?
iShield™ locates areas of interest in each image using color-analysis. Next a series of techniques are applied, namely contrast normalization, skin-color analysis, texture-analysis, edge-detection, blob-detection, shape analysis, brightness-flow analysis and face detection. The results of these image processing techniques are combined to make a decision on the image. Finally, the text is recovered from the web-page and analyzed. The results of the text-analysis and image-analysis are combined to make an overall decision.

What does iShield™ do when it detects explicit images?
When iShield™ detects suspect material it automatically records the event in a log file that can be reviewed by the administrator. If the image blocking mode is on, iShield replaces the pornographic images with a non-pornographic one.

Can I customize iShield™'s protection level?
iShield™ has a control panel accessible via a password. This control panel allows the administrator to

• Turn iShield™'s detection engine on and off
• Select the desired filtering level
  Safe-detects and blocks web sites that contain evidence of large amounts of pornographic material, but permits sites with small amounts of suspected content.
  Safer- (default) Falls between the 'Safe' and Safest' settings. Safest - detects and blocks sites that display any suspected image.
• Select the mode of operation
  Block -images are replaced with a non-pornographic image
  Warn -a message box alerts the user that pornography has been detected and logged
  Passive -the incident is recorded in the log files, but no other action is taken
• View the report showing the URL's of suspected pornographic web-pages, even if they were blocked
• Change the administrator password

Will iShield™ block images that are not pornographic?
While iShield™'s detection engine is designed to reduce the risk of false triggers, occasionally iShield™ will block non-explicit images in part due to the inherent subjectivity of what constitutes pornography. To alleviate this problem you may adjust the filter sensitivity from iShield™'s control panel. The Administrator may also add a site to the 'white list' to bypass images screening on that site.

Do I have to take out my existing blocking software?
No, we don't encourage this. Your existing software provides a basic level of protection. Our software adds a much higher degree of monitoring and control - within the web-browser itself.

What happens if I forget my password?
Unlike some other filters, you will not be locked off the internet if you forget your password. You will, however, be unable to access the iShield Control Panel to change settings or uninstall the program. For your convenience, you may have your password automatically emailed to the account you registered under at any time.

We've already got a firewall …
Firewall's are designed to stop external access to your systems but don't control, monitor or report what is being viewed using the web-browser.