Shield Your Family from Undesired Web Content

The Internet brings a wealth of information into your home. But this same mechanism presents a minefield of content which may be inappropriate to users of any age. This device/service may help to prevent more sensitive Internet users from being exposed to this content.

iBoss Pro ($109.95) is a device and a subscription service ($14.95/mo or $119.95/yr) which connects between your broadband connection and your home's or business' computers. All requests from those computers are first passed through the servers of Phantom Technologies (iBoss Pro's manufacturer), where the requests are compared to both customer-configured preferences and Phantom Technologies' databases of suspicious or inappropriate sites. Designed for non-technical users, a web-based interface allows a user with administrator privileges to configure the iBoss Pro to control:

• Blocking of Websites by Category (the service continually updates a database of sites with questionable content)
• Application Blocking (controlling which online programs are allowed to connect to the Internet, such as chat clients, games and file sharing services)
• Scheduled Internet Access (at what times of day any given computer on the local network can connect to the Internet, even what applications can run at certain times of day)
• Access to sites which may present security risks due to scams or which host malicious software worms and viruses

iBoss Pro can apply these filtering concepts all your computers, or custom filtering on a computer-by-computer basis (this configuration requires an inexpensive network router, not included). You could, for instance, allow your kids to use their video chatting client between 8pm and 9pm. iBoss Pro can also record logs of inbound and outbound activity, and even email reports of both to the administrator. (Note that the iBoss Pro can be circumvented by simply removing it from the network's path, so total security would involve putting in a physically inaccessible location under lock and key.)

Phantom Technologies also offers the original iBoss ($89.95; $7.95/mo or $59.95/yr), which performs similar tasks to iBoss Pro, but does not offer scheduled access features.

Phantom's original product, iPhantom, creates an enterprise-level secure encrypted connection between you and the Internet. iPhantom promises security against someone monitoring your online activity, while also giving you complete anonymity while online (ordinarily, your activities online could identify your home or business network and even which computer from the information which travels all the way to the website's server and back). iPhantom is portable, and can provide a very secure method for connecting through wired access point over which the user has no administrative control. iPhantom can be used concurrently with iBoss and iBoss Pro.

The excellent technology journalist Leo Laporte is an iBoss user (he as an 11 year old son and 14 year old daughter) - he mentions iBoss operation in Episode 282 of his KFI Tech Guy radio show, which you can download here. This is a 90 minute show, and if you listen 42 minutes, 57 seconds into the show, you'll hear him talking to caller "Carlos" about using iBoss.