A recent article in The Telegraph reported that one in eight British parents either didn't know how to install a porn filter program or didn't realize such things exist. How about you? Have you taken steps to shield your children, or yourself, from encountering Internet porn? Traditional parental control utilities center around filtering out inappropriate content; some do that job better than others. We'll help you pick the right one.

Of course, a full-featured parental control system is likely to include many features beyond content filtering. Most let you control when the kids can go online, and they can put a cap on the amount of time they spend on the computer or on the Internet, too. Many will track IM conversations and flag risky communication, or let parents control the list of IM contacts. Some will limit use of games based on ESRB ratings, monitor social media activity, force Safe Search, and more. It can get pretty complicated! In this article I'll focus solely on filtering out porn.

Small businesses should pay attention, too. If one employee is offended by another employee surfing porn in the next cubicle, you might face a lawsuit. Sure, you can let employees use company PCs for non-work Web browsing, but you don't have to let them visit NSFW sites.

Free Solutions
You don't have to pay to keep your Internet smut-free. If you already make use of Microsoft's Windows Live services, adding Windows Live Family Safety 2011 is a snap, and costs nothing. Rather than block specific categories, this product lets you set a general filtering level. The highest level blocks nothing but warns before allowing "adult content." The next level below actively blocks adult sites but allows everything else; that's the one you want.

Norton Online Family Premier costs $49.99 per year, but all of its content-filtering goodness is also available in the free edition. It can filter out content matching almost four dozen categories, but all you need to do is check off Porn and Mature Content.

The free edition of Qustodio v1.9 filters out sites matching almost 30 categories. Here again, all you need to do is check off Pornography and Mature Content.

You configure all three of these free solutions using an online portal. A small, local client on each PC enforces the rules you've set. That's very convenient for a modern, multi-PC family.

Special Features
The venerable Net Nanny 6.5 bolsters list-based filtering with real-time analysis of page content. This lets it do things like block only erotic stories on a short-story website. It also has the unusual ability to filter secure (HTTPS) content. Remote management is possible, but your settings don't span multiple computers.

AVG Family Safety £81.83 at Amazon UK also supplements list-based filtering with real-time analysis, and it can block secure sites by category. It has the unusual ability to "push" settings upstream into a supported router, so filtering affects all connected devices. That's an extremely important feature, given the vast number of non-PC options for Web browsing.

AVG's whole-network filtering is one of the many standout features that make it our Editors' Choice for parental control overall. However, if you're just specifically looking to filter out pornography, you may do just as well with one of the free options.

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