Kosher Internet Technical Issues

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Several methods have been tried to remove objectionable content from the internet. They have had various degrees of success depending on the two audiences that have been targeted.

The first audience has been "family use". The intention was to remove objectionable content to the extent that a religious family can allow both children, teenagers and adults to benefit from the internet in much the same way it was thought that non-Jewish families benefited from the internet. In recent years, the entertainment, educational, economical (online shopping) and sociological (meeting new people) benefit to a religious family has been much questioned.

The second audience has been "professional use". Solutions were sought for people who are required and permitted to use the internet, either for their job, to perform research, or for Jewish outreach. This category of people generally includes those who are married and are prepared to work with the non-religious public. This also includes baalei teshuvah who have taken on a a religious lifestyle by choice, and under Rabbinic guidance reach out to others and to encourage them to return. These individuals also often found themselves inundated with unwanted advertisements, objectionable imagery and opportunity for engage in social activities which would normally be discouraged in a religious household.

• Content-filtering - This technique involves looking for objectionable words or images within the content as it flows from the provider to the browser. The simplest schemes a simple word list. More complicated schemes do a statistical analysis of the page based on words used, methods of presentation and other artifacts of the webpage. These are the same schemes used to filter out spam email. One of the most interesting filters of this type was developed for the Islamic community. It works by doing image processing on each image (or anywhere on the computer screen) and identifies unwanted content by color, texture and shape. It has the advantage of allowing the user to access the entire internet, dynamically checking the content at the moment it is presented to the user. The disadvantage is that it tends to filter out only the most objectionable content, and may filter out legitimate content. The better the scheme, the more compute intensive it is, slowing response time. Many of these schemes require the content to be sent twice, doubling the bandwidth. Together this amounted to operating costs for ISPs and in turn, increased price to the consumer, so it was initially avoided.

• DNS-filtering - Due to bandwidth issues, this was first scheme implemented by several "kosher internet" ISP services. Whenever a user types in a website name, it must be converted to a number before it can be used. This conversion is called DNS, and seemed a natural place to filter websites by name. Some ISPs would maintain a "blacklist" of objectionable websites and would simply not translate the name of any website on the list. The advantage of this system is that bandwidth was not affected, the ISP was not required to absorb inordinate amounts of processing time, and prices could be kept down. The disadvantage was that only one list of approved sites was maintained, and there was little agreement among customers as to which sites should be on the list. Eventually it was proven that this system was relatively easy to bypass, causing this scheme to be abandoned.

• URL-filtering - The alternative to DNS-filtering is to filter website names based on both their name and number form. This requires more sophisticated software that is either placed on the PC or at the ISP. The PC or ISP would maintain a "blacklist" of objectionable websites and would simply not translate the name of any website on the list. Again the advantage of this scheme is that bandwidth is not affected, the ISP is not required to absorb inordinate amounts of processing time or double bandwidth, and prices could be kept down. The disadvantage is maintaining a up to date list for objectionable sites. Furthermore, if the list was located on the PC, it must continually be updated from the ISP's master list. It has the undesirable feature that unrated websites are allowed, until they are reported.

• URL list - Another alternative to DNS-filtering is to filter website names by a "whitelist". This involves discarding all requests for websites not on a list of approved websites. Microsoft's Internet Explorer comes with such a filter. The advantage of a URL List is that it does not suffer from the drawback of URL-filtering, any unrated site is discarded and not shown. But maintenance of such an approved "whitelist" of names because unmanageable very quickly. ISPs must offer 24 hour hotlines to approve sites that may have been left out. While a list for "family use" could be approximated, a list for "professional use" was almost impossible to create, due to the need of professionals to collect information from a wide variety of sites.

• Blockage - One alternative, especially for internet services other than browsing is blockage. For example an ISP, or program installed on an a PC can block a rage of Port addresses for internet gaming or chat. While this seems to be a draconian solution, it appears to be effective in that the "family use" does not general want, and "professional use" does not require, use of internet gaming, chat or other more exotic internet services. The single exception is Internet Telephone (Skype), but its use by the hareidim is still very limited.

• Log files - As mentioned above, one of the problems of the internet is anonymity. The easy of access, and almost total privacy offered by the internet was caused members of some religious families to alter their behavior and engage in actions that other similar religious families would not. A simple way to address this problem is the use of logfiles. The most direct concern address by logging and reporting internet access to the billing address is to make the parents aware of their children's unauthorized use of the internet, or a boss aware of their employee's usage. This can be done at the ISP level, or PC software can be installed (see X3-watch software below). Another indirect, but perhaps just as significant effect is that all users of the internet behave differently if they are aware that their actions are being logged. This scheme does not prevent any access, but sometimes adds the needed self control to allow self regulation. Many schemes which address "internet addiction" also provide time limits to internet access restricting both the hours and length of duration of internet use.

• Authorized exceptions - With all these schemes, a mechanism for exceptions is often provided, due to the wide variety of internet content and the need by professional users. The question become who will authorize the exceptions. Most PC oriented software schemes have a master password which allows modification or temporarily overriding the filter settings. Some newer versions of internet filters do not even allow the installer to change his settings without logging his changes "publicly" at an associated website. Many of the early schemes were able to be "cracked" and thwarted, but most of these problems have been solved and the more expensive packages are relative secure in this respect. But all these schemes do not satisfy the requirement for "Externally verifiable compliance" meaning that individuals are not trusted[3] to decide for themselves whether their usage qualifies as allowed usage. So some "kosher internet" ISPs provide a 24 hour phone service where you may request a modification, but requires some sort of approval process before authorization is granted.

In summary most modern internet filters combine the above schemes to provide an integrated approach. Some are PC based, with enhanced security to prevent tampering, and some are ISP based with a 24 hour hotline. Even though security has been enhanced, due to the increased question whether hareidi families, particularly children, really benefit from the internet - there has been no change in Rabbinical ruling forbidding the internet for casual use. Theoretically individuals who are required and permitted to use the internet for parnasa reasons could make use of these services, however they are often too cumbersome to be practically used in the workplace. These service can help a lot with people working in areas of Jewish outreach, who are producing (not consuming) internet content and look for some kind of solution against unwanted advertisements and objectionable material.