K9 Web Protection Browser (for Android)

K9 Web Protection Browser (free) is a very simple app that blocks offensive Web content, malware, and spyware from your child's Android device as he surfs the Internet. It's decent if "free" if is your primary concern, but the complete lack of configurable settings?like customizing a user profile's filter? and one major weakness make me hesitate to recommend it.

Unlike most parental control browsers, like McAfee Family Protection Android Edition ($19.99/year) and McAfee Family Protection Android Edition ($19.99/year), Net Nanny 2.0 ($19.99/year), K9 can't select categories of content to filter to make it more age appropriate, nor can you quickly whitelist or blacklist URLs.

It doesn't perform up to par on newer devices, though this is an issue with the Android operating system rather than K9. While testing the app on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus I learned that Android devices running Android 4.X couldn't support key features: blocking other browsers, YouTube, and Google Play. Samsung apparently broke the redirection functionality in later flavors of Android, so you can't block other browsers, the YouTube app, or Google Play app on the device. However a K9 spokesman assured that Samsung is fixing this in their next update. This isn't K9's fault, but it'd benefit potential users to include a warning in the app's description. I tested this on a Samsung Galaxy S II running Android 2.3.5. ?

Simple Setup?Except One Problem
Practically no user effort is required by this app. Simply download, sign up, and allow K9 to be a Device Admin so your child can't uninstall the app. The biggest problem I saw during setup was that in order to install an additional "Install Helper," which prevents K9 from being killed by the task manager, you have to download a file outside Google Play. To do this, you have to temporarily disable a native setting that blocks non-Play downloads?the most common channel for Android malware.? ?

A Foxy Browser
K9 is built on top of the full-featured Firefox Mobile browser. It looks and feels just like Firefox, including tabbing, plug-in support, and bookmarking, but replaces the orange color scheme with Bluecoat's blue.? Loading pages isn?t as smooth or fast as Chrome or Opera, but it does the job.

Inflexible Filter
How does the K9 Browser know what to block? According to a product manager, the Android browser is hooked up to the same intelligent, cloud-based filter that powers the K9 Web Protection Browser for desktop users?that?s more than 70 million data points. Every time a child tries to load a website, the URL is instantly scanned against K9?s database of blacklisted sites that contain pornography, hate speech, violence, gambling and more than 55 other categories. It also removes links to "parent-child discussion" topics like abortion, sexuality, and dating.

My colleagues and I got a little creative when testing out the filter?s capabilities. Search terms like "porn," "poker," and "boobs" turned up 0 search results, while "penis" only served medical links that didn?t contain images. On the other hand "p0rn" and "b00bs" showed plenty. Moving one level up, phrases like "abortion methods" and "suicide" yielded normal Google results, and "teabagging? served, well, some explicit images. None of these terms would have would have gotten past McAfee Family Protection Android Edition or Net Nanny 2.0 for Android.

You Get What You Pay For
K9 Web Protection Browser (for Android) lacks many standard parental-control features elsewhere, namely the ability to customize a filter per user, or whitelist and blacklist URLs. Furthermore until Samsung fixes a redirect function in Android 4.x devices, K9 can't block alternate browsers, or YouTube, and Google Play within the browser. ?

K9 Web Protection Browser is free and runs pretty smoothly, but a truly concerned parent can spend an extra $20 a year for a much more powerful, fully-configurable parental control app.?

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/4HdwplJxt74/0,2817,2407068,00.asp

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