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Useful against Internet threats
By Philip Lee
22 May 2000
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BLOCKNOW! is an Internet security utility
program developed by local outfit InternetNow Sdn Bhd which addresses the
need for a localised solution to protect computer users from the negative
elements of the Internet.
After successfully installing BlockNOW! for the first time, you are prompted
to enter the administrator’s user ID and password which is provided by the
manufacturer. You can, of course, subsequently change the initial password
after logging into BlockNOW!.
This administrator user ID is used to create other user IDs as well as to
configure user-specific settings within the BlockNOW! administrator screen.
BlockNOW! has been designed to be simple and easy to use for most
computer-literate users.
The BlockNOW! Manager option brings you to the administrator screen where
you can define user IDs and their individual settings.
The administrator can decide the schedules for users to access the
Internet.
BlockNOW! gives you the option to enter the day of the week and the time
allowed for Internet access for each user.
It can also be configured in BlockNOW! to automatically e-mail users’
activity logs to the administrator. This feature helps the administrator to
easily keep track of Internet activities of all users.
BlockNOW! also comes with a dial-up feature to connect users to the Internet.
However, before you can use it, the proper settings must be present in the
administrator screen.
After creating the user IDs and configuring the dial-up settings, the
administrator can proceed to block Web sites, Web pages, news articles and
even words that are used in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) sessions.
By entering blacklisted and content filtering keywords, BlockNOW! offers
the flexibility to customise Internet usage according to specific
requirements. There are four main lists to implement settings to control
the accessibility to the Internet.
The first list allows you to enter uniform resource locator (URL) addresses
of Web sites that should be restricted by BlockNOW!.
The Content Filtering list contains keywords or expressions that are used
as criteria to block out certain Web pages. Subsequently, the News Article
list restricts any news Web sites that publish unhealthy sites dealing with
pornography.
Lastly, the IRC option gives the administrator the control to specify a
combination of keywords that are disallowed in any IRC sessions. For
example, BlockNOW! can automatically terminate an IRC session that uses
vulgar languages.
In order to make it simpler for the administrator to enter a combination of
keywords to be used as criteria for restricting Internet access, BlockNOW!
includes special operators to combine a number of keywords.
For instance, abc and xyz means BlockNOW! will take effect if both keywords
“abc” and “xyz” are present in the Web site.
There are a number of special operators that are available to combine a
number of keywords..
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