
C O M S I F T E R O P E R A T I O N
User Guide |
ComSifter CS-8D Pro
7–3
Blacklist
ComSifter maintains a Blacklist of sites that have been deemed unacceptable. The list is categorized as
follows:
Categories
Advertising Games
Audio-video Hacking
Chat Hate
Drugs Mail
Gambling Pornography
Blacklist Update
The staff at ComSifter constantly adds and removes sites from its blacklists. ComSifter will update its blacklists
either daily or weekly, depending on the service contract you have acquired.
The daily update is performed at a random time—between 11:00 PM and 6:00 AM local time.
The weekly update is performed Sunday, at a random time—between 11:00 PM and 6:00 AM local time.
The update is automatic and requires no user intervention.
Note:
Upon a Blacklist update, ComSifter will restart with the new list. A restart may
take up to one minute to complete. During this time, user access to the Internet
will be denied.
CSphrase Filter Technology
Blacklists are very effective if the offending web site is known. Hundreds of new sites catering to pornography
and other inappropriate content are added to the Internet weekly.
To insure that these sites are blocked—until they can be added to the Blacklist—ComSifter uses CSphrase
Filtering technology. CSphrase Filtering scans and assigns a numeric weight to each word on the requested
page. Appropriate words are assigned a negative value while inappropriate words are assigned a positive
value. ComSifter then adds these weights together and derives a value for the page. This value is then
compared with the Sensitivity threshold described in Filter Setup. If the threshold is exceeded, the page is
denied. If the threshold is not exceeded, the page is displayed.
An example of this in action is a search engine search for
nude breasts
. The page will be denied, as it
brings up multiple pornographic sites and the threshold is exceeded.
A search on the phrase
breast cancer
is not blocked. The good words found on the page modify the bad
words—allowing the page to be displayed.
Note:
CSphrase Filtering is biased to “not show the page if in doubt.” This reduces the
chance that web users will be exposed to inappropriate content.
As a result of this bias, there may be cases where a user believes they have
entered a very safe query but the page is blocked. If so, a more defined search
may bring better results. Using the example above, a search on
breast
cancer
will yield better results than
breast
. Even better would be
breast
cancer research
.
Summary of Contents for CS-8D Pro
Page 1: ...ComSifter protect web users now User Guide Model CS 8D Pro Version March 26 2012 0326121500 ...
Page 153: ...F I L T E R S E T U P User Guide ComSifter CS 8D Pro 4 23 Figure 4 19 Modify Page RegEx ...
Page 194: ...U S E R S User Guide ComSifter CS 8D Pro 6 28 Figure 6 19 Windows Firewall ...
Page 215: ...U S E R S User Guide ComSifter CS 8D Pro 6 49 Figure 6 40 Add User ...
Page 219: ...U S E R S User Guide ComSifter CS 8D Pro 6 53 Figure 6 43 Add IP ...