Archive notice: This article was originally published on February 7, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The confoki (Content for Kids) project http://www.confoki.org was presented today, Thursday, on the occasion of Safer Internet Day 2008. A combination of browser plug-in and special search engine is intended to protect children better from problematic web content. The basis for confoki’s operation is labels from the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA), part of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) http://www.fosi.org.
ICRA labels allow website operators to identify the nature of their content, which has already been used tens of thousands of times worldwide. “Tens of thousands of websites are the needle in the haystack,” says ISPA board member Michael Eisenriegler http://www.ispa.at admits that the self-regulation process is simple. Interested content providers can obtain their labels within a few minutes by completing a questionnaire on the FOSI website. Only the integration effort may be somewhat greater, for example through suitable, separate labelling of individual sections of large websites.
Although it is a self-regulation system, misuse is said to be rare. “There are two types of sites interested in labels,” Eisenriegler said in response to a question from the pressetext.de news service. Pornographic sites would declare themselves correctly as a legal safeguard to prevent access by children. Sites with content intended specifically for children seek to generate more traffic through suitable labels. Accidental incidents are more likely than misuse, for instance if an embedded news video contained more violent content than is usual for a website. External auditing is possible in disputed cases.
confoki will read existing ICRA labels through free browser plug-ins, with support planned for both Internet Explorer and Firefox. The desired settings are made directly in the browser. The plug-ins are planned not only for Windows XP and Vista but also for Mac OS X and Linux. A dedicated search engine is planned as an addition, listing only those websites in its results that actually have ICRA labels. confoki is scheduled to launch in autumn 2008.
The system will be seen not only as an alternative but also as a possible supplement to other measures. This refers both to suitable media education and to additional technical precautions, such as the content and access controls integrated into Windows Vista. “The Windows Live Family Safety Settings service http://fss.live.com offers even more extensive options,” Microsoft security spokesman Gerhard Göschl emphasises in conversation with pressetext. This service is available not only for Vista but also for Windows XP. Another advantage is that settings are stored on a central host. This allows the settings to be used on different computers in a household. Use at friends’ or relatives’ homes is also conceivable.
