UK ISP Tibboh is selling "safe" mobile broadband targeted at kids. For £19.99, you get a cheap USB HSPA modem, "10Gb" [sic] of data a month, and Internet access that's filtered like the movies.
Tibboh appears to be the first ISP to use the UK's official film classification scheme (U, PG, 12, 15, 18) to tag webpages using automated technology; parents can then assign a child's SIM card a certain level of approved content. Anything above that level will be blocked.
The idea is to simplify content filtering. Parents who may be confused or overwhelmed by complex filtering schemes should have less difficulty choosing a single, well-known movie rating for their child (to say nothing of installing and configuring many of the end-user solutions on the market). Tibboh even provides its own search engine so that "children only obtain results suitable for their age."
The company's sales pitch reinforces the idea of simplicity and goes after parents who don't feel fully comfortable with the Internet. "If you are unsure of how to keep your kids safe on the internet," says its website, "then tibboh is the mobile broadband solution for you."
According to the company, "The same standards are applied to the Internet that parents have come to expect over the years with cinema and DVD classifications." One obvious difference: movies classifiers actually watch the films in question. Tibboh's automated classification system works in tandem with tools like Netsweeper, but the company admits that it won't be foolproof. Still, the system is meant to be "hard to break" even for "clever kids."
How does a company market something like this to this kids? "Best of all, tibboh is safer, so you won't get any dodgy stuff you don’t like or don’t want and there’ll be less hassle from the parents... The great thing is that your parents will probably let you go on the Web more often."
The next great frontier is social networking, and the company is already "working on next generation technology which will analyse the language used on chat and social networking sites and alert the system to anything unusual or inappropriate. This will minimise the risk of cyber bullying or grooming and will allow children and young people to network online with their peers in relative privacy and increased safety."
Many of our readers have experience using, writing, or administering similar tools, so here's a question: how important is this kind of one-click "show my child only PG-rated Web content" for parents who want to set up such a system for their kids? And how effective is such a simple system likely to be?
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