Why Filter
Q: Why should I filter?
A. The Internet today is full of inappropriate sites that have harmful content, promoting or showing pornography, criminality, gambling, violence, illegal drugs, hate and discrimination, and the like. We need to be vigilant and take action. Filtering the Internet is a way for us to protect our families from moral harm. 711.net offers the best kind of ISP filtering through server-side filters that cannot be turned off.
Q: What is Internet filtering?
A. Internet filtering is a process that blocks access to certain material on the Internet. It can be implemented as exclusion filtering, which prevents access to selected material, or by inclusion filtering, which allows access only to selected material.
Q. Which type of filtering do you offer?
A. Our Internet services are of the exclusion type, and prevent access to sites deemed inappropriate for our intended audience. In addition to filtering, we provide for caching, a feature that stores frequently-accessed sites on local servers to speed up Internet access and decrease network traffic.
Q. Why do you offer filtered access?
A. We believe there is a large segment of the public that has avoided the Internet entirely, and many more that are rightly concerned about using the Internet, because of the ease with which objectionable content is encountered by them, their family members, or employees. We provide safe and dependable connection to finding and enjoying the positive resources on the Internet.
Q. How big of a problem are these inappropriate sites?
A. A recent Wall Street Journal article states that pornography is one of the biggest industries on the Internet. It is difficult to estimate how many sites are pornographic in nature, but to date, we have cataloged millions of Internet pages containing pornographic content.
Q. What is the likelihood that a child, or other users, will accidentally encounter something he or she should not have?
A. Without filtering, it is extremely easy for a child to access inappropriate material, unintentionally, or purposefully. In the first scenario, a child submits an innocuous word to a popular search engine, and the results provide links to pornography sites on the first page. Though inadvertent, the child is now within one click towards pornographic material. In the second scenario, a child searches using profane or vulgar language and is seconds away from an enormous resource of inappropriate material.
Q. Isn't filtering a kind of censorship?
A. Filtering is considered censorship by some, and a choice by others. When a newspaper editor decides to omit a story, it has been censored. When a magazine on cosmetics excludes automobiles, that topic has been censored or selectively omitted. Censorship is about making choices on what we see, or allow our families to see. By selecting our filtering service, users are choosing not to view pornography and other inappropriate content.
Q. What does a user have to do to use filtering?
A. Not a thing! All filtering is done though our facilities and updated daily. You don't need to buy or configure/manage any software. Once setup, you are on your way to worry-free Internet access.
Q. Do you provide a bypass to the filter for users who want it?
A. NO!
Q. What about users who find a site improperly blocked?
A. Any user can submit a site for immediate review. Just link to our Block/Unblock page, or send an email to request@711.net. We can manually make changes instantly if necessary. Most often it is because a user wants access to a site that we may have blocked inadvertently. Individual access privileges (e.g. for academic research) to blocked sites can not be granted.
Q. Who decides which sites to block?
A. We rely on a team of dedicated professionals who review each site in the company's database.
Q. What criteria do you use to block sites?
A. If the site contains at least one of the following, it will be placed on our blocked-site list: pornography, depictions of sexual acts, violence, criminal acts, drug use, excretory acts, graphic medical images without medical context, discrimination, profanity, and adult humor. In addition, we block access to all unmonitored chat, newsgroups and discussion groups.
Q. Can children or other users disable or circumvent the filtering service?
A. No! Our server-based filtering technology cannot be disabled. There is no client software to reconfigure or trick, and the network is configured so that the user cannot re-route Internet access around our servers.
