Use of Real-time Analysis is a Necessity for Effective Filtering on the Mobile Internet

PORTLAND, Oregon ? July 11, 2006 ? It?s a fact: millions of Internet users view pornographic content online each day. It?s also a fact that as mobile phones have continued to offer increased access to the Internet, Web sites offering access to inappropriate content for mobile Web users have already become a significant portion of the mobile Internet. Studies have demonstrated that the number of English-language sites dedicated to providing inappropriate content is growing an average of 40 percent quarter-on-quarter since 2005. And according to Strategy Analytics, last year cell phone pornography generated $400 million in revenue and is anticipated to grow to $5 billion within five years.

?Purveyors of pornography have always jumped into the latest technologies to supply their content ? from VCRs to cable TV to DVDs to the Internet, and now, to the mobile Web,? said Alistair Allan, RuleSpace president and CEO. ?Now, pornography for mobile phones is growing exponentially and it is becoming more and more important to give parents tools to keep this content out of the wrong hands. We?ve led the industry for 10 years providing tools for filtering inappropriate content on the traditional Web, mostly through large, accurate lists, but for mobile filtering, lists alone just weren?t enough.?

As is the case with filtering products for the traditional Web, good lists will be one component to providing effective mobile content filtering. At present, the mobile Internet is comprised of a combination of sites that are ?always clean,? ?always adult,? and ?sometimes clean? and ?sometimes adult.? Because of this mix, large, accurate lists of well known ?always clean? and ?always adult? sites are a necessary piece of an effective filtering solution. But alone, they have already been shown to be largely ineffective.

Unlike the traditional Web, much of the content that gets displayed on mobile phones is generated ?on the fly? by dynamic content generation systems, which display content based on how the user navigates a menu on the phone, not by referring to a specific URL. This makes ?pre-categorizing? the content that will be delivered to the mobile device unfeasible. This break from traditional dependence on the URL also makes it impossible to pre-categorize many sites as clean or adult on a list ? thus rendering filtering solutions that rely entirely on lists ineffective. This is especially disturbing when you consider that analysis of access of the mobile Internet by U.S. mobile users has shown that access to ?dynamic? mobile Web sites is second only to access to entertainment sites. Also troubling is the reality that the mobile Internet is rapidly moving toward user-generated content in which users can choose to share both clean and inappropriate content.

When it comes to the evolving mobile Internet, it is necessary to have real-time analysis in place in order to help parents keep inappropriate content away from their children. RuleSpace, a provider of parental controls since 1996, has already identified more than 22,000 mobile sites that serve both clean and adult content. Without a real-time rater, mobile phone carriers would need to make sweeping, generalized policy decisions that would always allow or always block these sites, greatly increasing the chance of exposure to inappropriate content, or greatly reducing the Internet experience. With the growth of user-created content, carriers would have to manually inspect every user?s Web page and grade it ? and re-grade it every time they make a change. While lists provide a great start for effectively filtering inappropriate content, they simply don?t solve the problem of dynamic and user-generated content, and the addition of real-time recognizers to analyze the Web page content as it is being requested is the only truly effective solution.

?More and more children and teenagers are carrying mobile phones with them, making it increasingly important than ever that mobile filtering become more effective,? Allan said. ?Unfortunately, the mobile Web works in such a way that simply relying on lists to block content isn?t going to cut it anymore. The industry has tested our real-time technology, seen how accurate and fast it is, and now has the tools they need to help keep inappropriate content out of children?s hands.?

About RuleSpace, LLC. RuleSpace, LLC. is a privately held corporation located in Beaverton, Oregon. RuleSpace has been providing award winning Parental Controls services since 1996, and is the world?s leading creator and provider of Parental Controls technology. RuleSpace solutions are offered through ISPs and Cable providers, filtered search engines, and OEM solutions which use RuleSpace?s Online List Lookup Service with more than 50 million accurately categorized URLs in 15 languages, and its real-time recognizers.