30 Minutes To Crack 84$ Million Porn Filter

[Cpl Kendall]

Herald Sun

A MELBOURNE schoolboy has cracked the Federal Government's new $84 million internet porn filter in minutes.

Tom Wood, 16, said it took him just over 30 minutes to bypass the Government's filter, released on Tuesday.

Tom, a year 10 student at a southeast Melbourne private school, showed the Herald Sun how to deactivate the filter in a handful of clicks.

His technique ensures the software's toolbar icon is not deleted, leaving parents under the impression the filter is still working.

A former cyber bullying victim, Tom feared a computer-savvy child could work out the bypass and put it on the internet for others to use.

Tom, who spoke to Communications Minister Helen Coonan about cyber safety during a forum in May, said the Federal Government should have developed a better Australian made filter.

"It's a horrible waste of money," he said.

"They could get a much better filter for a few million dollars made here rather than paying overseas companies for an ineffective one."

In response to the Herald Sun's , inquiries the Government added an Australian designed filter, Integard, to the website yesterday, which Tom cracked within 40 minutes.

Senator Coonan said the Government had anticipated children would try and find ways to get around the NetAlert filters, and suppliers were contracted to provided continuing updates.

"The vendor is investigating the matter as a priority," Senator Coonan said.

"Unfortunately, no single measure can protect children from online harm and . . . traditional parenting skills have never been more important."

Family First Senator Steve Fielding, a long-time campaigner for cyber safety, said cracking the software showed the need for compulsory filtering by internet providers.

"You need both. You need it at the ISP and at the PC level," Senator Fielding said.

"The Government has not listened to common sense and it leaves kids exposed."

The filters are designed to stop access to sites on a national blacklist, bar use of chat rooms, and can be tailored by parents to stop access to sites.

Tom stressed the filters were missing the mark by a long way regardless of how easy they were to break.

"Filters aren't addressing the bigger issues anyway," he said. "Cyber bullying, educating children on how to protect themselves and their privacy are the first problems I'd fix.

"They really need to develop a youth-involved forum to discuss some of these problems and ideas for fixing them."

The $189 million NetAlert scheme includes $84.4 million for the National Filter Scheme, plus funding for online policing, a help line, and education programs.

The Government will also offer the option of filtering by internet service providers.

Under its filter program, households can download the filter from netalert.gov.au or have it sent out on to them.

Well that's money well spent. I hope they sue the developer and the company fires the testers.

[Narsil]

Ultimate proof that porn filters are an exercise in futility.

[Cpl Kendall]

Yes, to quote someone on SDN: "never send software to do a parents job".

[Narsil]

Yes, to quote someone on SDN: "never send software to do a parents job".

Good statement. I'm quite sick of parents who don't take responsibility for their wee ones, personally; turns the children into chavs with no future who do nothing but sit around and drain the economy.

[Mr. Oragahn]

What's hard for a parent is to always be behind his kids' back.

Though you can forbid your children from simply accessing internet until you're home, they may find a way to get internet somewhere else.

And when you allow them to be on internet, you'd need to stay with them. Well, of course, that means taking a book and stay near the computer while the kid talks on MSN or does what kids do.

A bit of automatic protection and help shouldn't be turned down just because of responsability duties.

Now, I agree that education has turned into shit these late decades. It seems that everybody gets assisted, and certain governments, by issuing more and more restrictive laws and "civilian helpers", actually turn the populations into sheeps.

It turns out to be counter productive at some point.