Deloitte announced today the results of a second European study on filtering solutions for illegal and possibly harmful online information aimed at children. This independent study was carried out on behalf of the European Commission as part of the “Safer Internet plus Programme” (SIP). Thirty of the most widespread filtering tools were tested by more than one hundred parents and teachers in ten European countries, and by Expert Testers.

Key findings

The results of this year’s study have been compared with those of 2006 to reveal the evolution of these tools and the industry. Half of the 23 filters we tested both in 2006 and 2007 have improved their filtering capabilities relative to non-sexual content. Unfortunately, eight vendors scored weaker than last year relative to sexual content, partially because our test cases now included user generated content (Web 2.0) which is more difficult to filter. Seven vendors have resolved the security issues we told them about last year and three vendors improved their support of EU languages.

For kids younger than 10 years old, it is generally accepted and confirmed by the SIP-Bench Steering Board that a filter may block too much if that ensures almost all harmful content is filtered. For children older than 10 years, people tend to prefer to filter carefully, even if this means that some content is not filtered, in order not to block any interesting content. Carlo Schüpp, Deloitte Partner, says: “This study shows that filtering technology is maturing and can be made effective to live up to the expectations of child carers throughout the EU. Still, further improvement is needed to remove the perception of “filtering does not work””.

The 2007 benchmark shows for the 30 products that:

• For kids of the age 6-10 years, one vendor scores “very good” and six other filters score “good”.
• For youngsters of the age 11-16 years, however, no filter scores “very good” or even “good”. If we limit the harmful test cases to pornographic content, however, three vendors score “very good” and eight vendors scored “good”.

The scores of many stand-alone solutions on the ease-of-use were lower compared to last year: users expect simple filtering solutions: plug-and-play, either pre-installed or included in the service provided by ISPs. In fact, in terms of ease of installation and the update procedure, the filters in our test that score best are those offered as a service (AOL) or as an option when installing the operating system (Microsoft Vista).

Carlo Schüpp says: “Content that is generated by users, “Web 2.0” like picture or video sharing sites, changes every second. Classical solutions with downloaded ‘black lists’ and ‘white lists’ are therefore seriously challenged. To cope with such user generated content, we expect that the Internet community itself will need to be involved to indicate whether it contains certain types of content rather than counting on the vendor alone.”

For further information about the SIP Benchmark 2007 and to view the full results of the study, visit: http://www.sip-bench.eu

European independent study on filtering tools

During the second year of this three-year project, Deloitte once again carried out the SIP Benchmark testing via a comprehensive study of filtering tools and software. This benchmark aims to analyse how effectively these technical solutions protect children aged 6 to 16 against harmful content on the Internet. The aim of the study is to provide an expert, vendor/supplier-independent, objective assessment of the filtering software and services.

The study’s focus is twofold: on the one hand, Deloitte analyses whether the filtering solutions protect children from harmful content without blocking access to educational material, for example. On the other hand, the study investigates how parents and schools can install and customise these solutions, while respecting the European legislation on privacy of the children.

About 150 parents and teachers from various European countries were involved in the study. In addition to these “real life” testers, an Internet laboratory was set up to conduct thorough testing on 30 software packages under identical conditions.

The tests will be repeated later on this year. The project coordinators are currently looking for participants in all European countries. The website and the filtering tools are available in Dutch, German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Hungarian, Polish and Swedish.

If you wish to take part in the 2008 Benchmark, you can register at: http://www.sip-bench.eu 

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