At the corner newsstand, they cover up the skin magazines and put them up high where kids can't reach. Guardware's iShield 2.0 tries to do the equivalent for pornographic images on the Internet. Using a complex algorithm involving skin tones, textures, limb positions, and more, it attempts to cover up porn and only porn. This new release updates the basic Internet-only iShield product to match the iShield Plus edition updated last fall.

After installing the product, you launch the password-protected control panel. For each user account on the computer, you select one of five profiles: Child, Teen, Adult, Default, or Off. The software comes with settings preconfigured for each profile, but you can tweak these to suit yourself. A protection-level slider lets you set the engine's sensitivity to Safe, Safer, or Safest. The higher the setting, the more images iShield will block (and the bigger the chance it will accidentally block non-porn images). Logically enough, this setting defaults to Safe for Adult, Safer for Teen, and Safest for Child.

The other big choice involves deciding what iShield should do when it detects dirty pictures. In "pasive" (sic) mode, it merely records the event without taking action. If set to Warn mode, it logs the event and pops up the cryptic warning "Suspected Web site detected." In Block mode, it covers up the image; if, when configuring the software, you check the optional Redirect box, iShield will redirect to a safe landing page when it encounters a page with a preponderance of porn. Finally, in Automatic mode, the utility can take any of the above actions depending on its analysis of the page's images. You can also build a whitelist of good sites and block access to all other sites, but I see little point in doing so. The Internet is simply too big for this to ever be a useful strategy.

By default, porn images get covered by a picture of a big shield against a jarring black-and-yellow striped background. This version lets you replace that picture with an image you select yourself—or rather, an image you have "selceted." Clearly, the app's developers need to invest in a spell-checker or a proofreader. These peculiar misspellings in the user interface may not impede the app's functioning, but they really do give it an amateurish look.

Internet time scheduling is new in version 2.0. As in Safe Eyes 5.0, you can define a weekly schedule of days and hours when Internet access is permitted. Any program that attempts Internet access during a no-access time will be terminated outright. But be warned: This feature can cause collateral damage. Suppose your child has several Word documents open for homework and happens to click a link in one of them. Poof! The utility terminates Word and all unsaved work vanishes. This feature needs refinement.

The software records all violations by all users except those for whom you've selected the Off profile. Clicking the Reports button in the iShield control panel produces a simple list of offending URLs along with the date, the time, and the name of the user responsible. If you're unsure why a site was flagged as bad, you can open the URL from within the report.

That's it for iShield's features; The Plus version adds others, such as category-based Web site blocking, IM monitoring, blocking of IM and P2P programs, and blocking of porn images outside the browser. Unlike Bsafe Online, Safe Eyes 5.0, Sentry At Home and SnoopStick, neither iShield edition offers remote management or real-time notification of violations. On the flip side, none of the other standalone parental control products even attempt to identify and block porn images. This utility is a one-trick pony, but it's a good trick.—Next: Spotty Coverage