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Smart Filter Technology
Blacklists and the PICs rating system are very effective if the offending web site is known and if they properly rate themselves. 100’s 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, NetPurifier uses Smart Filter Technology. Smart Filter 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. NetPurifier then adds these weights together and derives a value for the page. This value is then compared with the Smart Filter threshold described in Chapter 3. 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
Note: Smart Filter is biased to “not show the page if in doubt”. This reduces the chance that children 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 word be “breast cancer research”.
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