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In the last three sections, you learned about the issues of inappropriate material on the Internet and efforts that are being made to censor such material.

One of the most popular methods of censorship is the use of filters to block inappropriate content coming from the World Wide Web. There are literally dozens of different types and versions of web filters, and they work in all sorts of different ways. Whether they are effective as a whole is still under debate, but the fact remains that they are becoming more widely used as the Internet grows.

In this activity you will have the chance to see for yourself how various types of filters work. We have prepared a "sample World Wide Web" consisting of ten phony sites. Your mission (as a faithful dog owner, perhaps) is to block, however you can, all the sites which contain information on cats. Yes, that's right, cats.

You have x filters to work with, and they are displayed in a convenient list. You can find out more about each filter, and mix and match filters. They, you can go to the web and see their effects. Note that some bad sites may not always be blocked, and some good sites may be blocked accidentally! You can click on individual sites to find out more, and see what each filter has to say about the site's contents.

Instructions

The opening screen repeats what is said here. Once you click to begin, you are taken to the web browser. Clicking on a site brings up the detailed information for that site. If you have any filters applied, you can click on their names to see what they think about the site.

The filter list is reached from the web browser by clicking in the top right. You can choose your filters here, and be sure to click on the filter name to find out more about it! You are not scored for this activity, but you must look at the effects of a filter or two before the site will let you mark the site as finished.

Enjoy the activity, and please give the applet some time to load.

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