Online Filters Ditched In Australia Since They Don't Work

from the well,-of-course... dept

The debate in the US over forcing libraries and schools to install content filters has died down for the time being, but here's some more evidence why filters are a waste of time and money. They simply don't work. Australia, which is fairly gung ho about restricting access to certain sites, has discovered that the filters they recommend often don't work very well. The two products mentioned in the story show ridiculous failure rates. The first, Net Nanny, failed 38% of the time, while Cyber Sentinel failed more than half the time (53%). Of course, they don't say what type of failure we're talking about (Type I, Type II?), so it's unclear if, by "failure", they mean that the software is blocking a site it shouldn't, or not blocking a site it should.

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